On February 27 and 28, 2025, specialists from across UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital and Children’s Hospital Colorado (CHCO) convened in Academic Office One to discuss a growing concern among patients with lifelong diagnoses:
transition of care.
"Transition of care" is the name for the space between pediatric and adult medical care. It’s a gap in which some patients fall through the cracks; patients and their families understand they have aged out of pediatric care, but getting established
at an adult or specialty care clinic can be a daunting task, especially for medically complex patients and their caregivers.
Enter Dr. Daniel Wood, a transition of care specialist and Chair of Pediatric Transition at CHCO. Dr. Wood, as a urologist, often cares for patients for whom transition is a major concern. Urological anomalies including spina bifida, hypospadias, and
others require careful transitions when a patient ages out of pediatric care.
But transition isn’t a worry for urological patients alone: transition will eventually become a concern for patients with diagnoses ranging from Down Syndrome to epilepsy to those who have undergone transplants. Dr. Wood is passionate about bridging
the gap between pediatric and adult care, ensuring that these patients don’t get lost in the shuffle of the transition.
As Dr. Wood spoke with specialists from across CHCO and University Hospital, he realized that there were many physicians whose biggest struggle with transitioning their patients was a lack of resources—and a lack of information. Better outcomes
could only be achieved when a patient's care team were up to date on the best practices and techniques for a successful transition.
So Dr. Wood began dreaming of a solution: Bridging the Gap, a conference centered around transition of care, hosting anyone who wanted to improve their team’s transition outcomes. He reached out to Dr. Eleanor Comfort, a pediatrician at UCHealth
Internal Medicine Clinic at University Hospital, to help him put together the event and begin creating a foundation for transition programs across the Denver Metro Area and beyond.
With the help of a team of administrators from the Division of Urology and Department of General Internal Medicine, Drs. Wood and Comfort drafted an agenda that would include over a dozen national and international voices in ten specialties. After several
months of planning and organizing, on February 27, over 80 physicians, advanced practice providers, trainees, and administrators gathered to share their clinics’ strategies for transition and to learn from the strides made by others.
The day kicked off with a multi-specialty panel of doctors focused on existing transition of care programs, including Urology, Allergy and Respiratory, Gastroenterology, Neurology, and more. After the panel, attendees kicked off the afternoon with a wide
array of networking-based events like Transition Speed Dating—for adult specialists to meet their pediatric counterparts—and breakout groups. The breakout groups covered a wide variety of topics including Forming a Team, Tracking Patients,
Adult Multidisciplinary Clinics, and Navigating Insurance.
One of the highlights of the in-person day of the conference was the poster presentation section. Trainees, physicians, and administrators presented posters on the innovations made in their transition of care programs; the first-place winner shared about
Transition Passports, a document holding critical information about a patient’s diagnoses, treatment plan, care team, and more. Attendees asked dozens of questions about the program, requesting more information and preparing to adapt it to fit
the needs of their patients. It was a truly satisfying moment for Drs. Wood and Comfort—proof that a meeting like Bridging the Gap was going to lead to better patient care and, according to ongoing research, better outcomes.
After the in-person day of the conference wrapped up, virtual Day Two began on February 28. Meeting via Zoom allowed attendees to learn from national and international experts, including Dr. Gunter de Win of Antwerp university, Belgium and Greg Ryan,
founder of the One in 5000 Foundation for anorectal malformation (ARM) awareness. Day Two also made space for case discussions, allowing providers with less experience transitioning their patients to ask questions of transition of care experts. Then,
for as many months as it had taken to plan, Bridging the Gap was over… for now.
As for the future? Dr. Wood hopes that Bridging the Gap isn’t just a one-time affair.
“We would love to see these conversations continue on past the conference," he says. "There will be more to come in the future, be it smaller events throughout the year or a continuation of Bridging the Gap as an annual event."
Plans are already in the works for a Second Annual Bridging the Gap conference, where we may see programs presenting on their work established as a direct result of this year’s meeting.
