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In Early Childhood, Continuous Care by 1 Doctor Improves Delivery of Health Screenings |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: Children examined by the same doctor during their first six months of life are more likely to receive appropriate preventive health screenings -- for lead poisoning, anemia and tuberculosis -- by age two. Pediatric researchers said being cared for repeatedly by the same physician, often referred to as continuity of care, was a very important factor in the children they studied. Researchers from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and The University of Pennsylvania reported on a study of 1,564 infants with Medicare insurance in the March issue of the journal Pediatrics. All the infants were born at three Philadelphia-area hospitals between July 1999 and March 2001 and received health care at over 120 different primary care offices. The finding applied to all office visits, in addition to "well child" visits, and children were followed for the first two years of life. Children most at risk, such as those from urban, low-income families, often don't receive proper screening for lead toxicity, anemia and tuberculosis. Attempts to improve outcomes should focus not only on increasing the number of visits to a primary care provider, but also reducing the number of pediatricians treating the child over time. A next step is to identify which children are most at risk of not receiving repeat care from the same doctor. "In 2008, there's a lot of discussion about the purpose of primary care and the benefits children achieve by having a regular doctor," said Alessandrini. Future studies are needed to monitor patients over a longer period of time and in a wider geographic region, the authors said.
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