Seattle Children’s to Acquire AStar

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/401455_autism26.html

Seattle Children’s to acquire autism clinic
Last updated February 25, 2009 11:19 p.m. PT

By PAUL NYHAN
P-I REPORTER

Seattle Children’s decided this week to acquire one of the city’s leading autism clinics as part of a broader plan to create a state-of-the-art program dedicated to the mysterious disorder.

The hospital will absorb ASTAR, a 14-person operation that worked with nearly 900 families last year on a $520,000 budget. Despite ASTAR’s clinical success, it was struggling to raise enough money to continue.

Now, the clinic will become part of 4,000-employee Seattle Children’s. The move promises greater financial stability and more services to families who often wait eight months or longer for treatment once their child is diagnosed with autism.

After a diagnosis, families often must navigate a confusing network of therapists, doctors and services spread across the city.

To address that, the hospital plans to create a one-stop program, where families can receive a diagnosis, get treatment and tap into support for parents, siblings and children with autism.

“It demonstrates Seattle Children’s commitment to autism via a program that we hope will be one of the most progressive and comprehensive in the country, combining clinical services and research,” Dr. Bryan King, the hospital’s head of psychiatry and behavioral medicine, said via e-mail.

On a far smaller scale, ASTAR offered extensive treatment for autism for the=2
0last six years. At the slightly run-down clinic, a parent can talk to experts about medical options, what treatments are covered by insurance, school choices and alternative therapies.

“It really helped put all the puzzle pieces together,” said Dr. Sheena Aurora, who took her 4-year-old son Jaideep to the clinic after he was diagnosed with autism last summer. “It was like a one-stop shop for me.”

But it was a small shop run out of an old Taco Del Mar headquarters in South Lake Union. Its workers will now move to the region’s largest children’s hospital in Seattle’s Sandpoint neighborhood, expanding their treatment and fundraising reach.

The decision reflects growing demand for treatment of a puzzling neurological disorder that has no known cause or established cure. Even with the most extensive treatment-and-research autism network in the Pacific Northwest, Seattle can’t keep pace with demand.

That’s because the number of children diagnosed with autism has exploded to 1 in 150 children, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“It is going to create something that certainly the Northwest has (never) seen before,” said ASTAR’s head, Dr. Gary Stobbe.

“I think we are going to see some great things come as a result of this move today.”

The details of the new program remain unclear.

Officially, the Seattle Children’s strategic planning group voted to absorb ASTAR’s clinical services on Tuesday.

But the group also voted to move forward with a comprehensive autism program, which coul
d be housed in its own building as early as this summer, Stobbe said.

The new program also plans to offer services through teenage years and into adulthood.

“Above all, it will expand services to a community in great need — long wait times for diagnosis and ongoing treatments, and limited space and funding,” King said.

P-I reporter Paul Nyhan can be reached at 206-448-8145 or paulnyhan@seattlepi.com. Read the Seattle P-I’s parenting blog, Working Dad, at blog.seattlepi.com/family.

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