Pediatric Primary Care Analysis

As the overall U.S. population experienced increases in unmet need and delayed care between 2003 and 2007, children were no exception. Low-income children encountered the greatest increase in unmet needs among all children and access to healthcare declined more for people in fair or poor health than for healthier people.

Aaron E. Carroll, MD, MS is a Professor of Pediatrics and Associate Dean for Research Mentoring at Indiana University School of Medicine. He is also the director of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research. He

Primary care access is a growing concern for all Americans and the reason behind this concern is an imbalance between demand for care and capacity to provide care. Demand is growing as the population expands, ages, and faces chronic illnesses and the capacity is shrinking as the ration of primary care clinicians to population drops (Ghorob & Bodenheimer, 2012). A primary goal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was to improve access to quality health care for uninsured Americans, largely through public and private insurance expansions (Polsky et al, 2015). At the same time, the architects of the law recognized the need to increase the availability of primary care providers to meet the increased demand for health care (Pg. 538, 2015).

The goal of this policy brief is to support Alabama’s current decision to continue Medicaid Primary Care Parity, as first enacted by congress in 2010 to all states under section 1202 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). However, as Alabama is facing budget cuts to its Medicaid services, supporting the “Ensuring Access to Primary Care for Women and Children Act” will extend federally funded Medicaid primary care parity without harming the state budget and negate the consequences of limiting Medicaid enrollee access and benefits. The federal government proposed to pay 100% of Medicaid services mandated under section 1202, from 2013 to 2014, which has since expired in December 2014. This program requires certain primary care services to be reimbursed at higher rates equivalent to those rates paid by Medicare for equivalent primary care services. Limited provider participation, limited Medicaid beneficiary access & decreased enrollment of physicians, physician assistants (PAs) and nurse practitioners (NPs) into primary care can be improved through this monetary incentive.

Primary care in the United States has been in a state of neglect or of being underfunded for a long time. This dysfunctional state has been allowed to occur despite evidence, which shows the importance of primary care in creating healthy outcomes and controlling costs. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) tries to address some of these issues by:

Healthcare access is a major public policy initiative to improve mothers and children's health access and utilization which began with Medicaid expansions in the 1980s and then came along (CHIP) Children’s Health Insurance Program in 1997. Greater access to prenatal care provided by Medicaid has not contributed to the declines in infant health disparities (Dubay, Joyce, Kaestner, & Kenney, 2001: Epstein & Newhouse, 1998). Studies suggest that Medicaid and CHIP the expansion has contributed to the declines in most mortalities for the external causes for children 6 to 17 years of age, but has not been resulted in the decrease in the mortality diseases between the white and black children (Howell, et al., 2010). Access to high-quality health care still remains an important goal for infants, children, and young women. To get high-quality care, Maternal Child Health population needs health insurance to help cover most of their benefits when it comes to providers and

The United States (US) health care system is changing dramatically. The Affordable Care Act is a catalyst that is spurring change by the promotion of two drivers: access and primary preventative care. Before the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, over 47 million Americans were uninsured thus denying them access to basic health care (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [HHS], 2012). Increasing access and increasing the availability of primary care services (pre-natal care, preventative care, primary disease prevention, and secondary disease

As enrollment increased emergency room over-utilization for non-emergent reasons decreased. The new Medicaid Managed Care population was being educated on the ‘Gate Keeper’ concept; the idea of having a primary care physician. A large primary care pediatric practice launched an Emergency Room diversion pilot program and conducted a study of Medicaid recipients, 18 years and younger . (2) 17,382 children were enrolled in an enhanced access group (intervention group) and 26,066 received services from other local primary care providers (control group).

State Children’s Health Insurance Program was enacted to address the issue of lower access to genera health care as well as oral health care among children. Studies have shown that

This study discusses the effects on community health centers and how much they will impact preventable hospital admission among those patients with Medicaid or are uninsured. According to the authors of this study, due to the Affordable Care Act (ACA)it is expected that by 2023 expanded health care coverage will enroll an additional 25 million people into health care plans. Community health centers have begun to play a very important role in providing primary care among low-income patient populations because of the health care expansion under the ACA. Federally qualified health centers (FQHC) are providing comprehensive health care for Medicaid and Medicare patients and being reimburse at higher rates than other medical facilities making

This event is hosted by The Myrlie Evers-Williams Institute for the Elimination of Health Disparities and the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Mississippi Medical Center along with the Mississippi State Medical Association.

Madison Children’s Hospital has been serving the multi-cultural rich county of Orange, California since 1960. For more than 50 years, Madison Children’s hospital (MCH) has been steadfastly committed to providing the highest quality medical care to children. MCH has provided medical care to over 1 million children in the county of Orange. Our regional pediatric healthcare network includes a state-of-the-art main hospital facility in the City of Orange. Madison Children’s Clinic also offers many primary and specialty care services to the community. Madison Children’s hospital has recorded an increase in the amount of children and adolescents ages

Using a variety of peer-reviewed sources, this paper will focus on the problems in the United States healthcare system and its relation to children’s access to healthcare. Despite efforts, there are several aspects in the current healthcare system that cause children to not have access to healthcare. In other cases the children may be eligible for health insurance but do not have insurance. This paper will analyze the disparities surrounding children’s healthcare, the socioeconomic aspects of it, and other factors that cause a lack of access to healthcare.

Primary Children’s Hospital is a tremendous hospital that cares about the patients with love and concern, “Thousands of individual children receive extraordinary care each year at Primary Children’s” (History).When it comes to pediatrics, kids need special and unique care that regular hospitals most likely can’t provide. With 33 million children who are under medicaid, 2 million of those children are medically challenged(About Children’s Hospitals). Those children require long term care that only Children’s Hospitals can provide. Though Children’s Hospitals are very successful, they would not be as successful without the help and donations the hospitals get from the community. To identify the importance of Children’s Hospitals, the public must

Children in the United States are also suffering because of the lack of universal health care coverage. While there is coverage for children living at or below the poverty level, there is no coverage available for those children whose parents make too much money to qualify for the low-income programs and too little money to be able to afford health insurance. “These gaps in health insurance coverage may lead to delayed or unmet health care needs among children” (Kim & Viner-Brown, 2007). As a result, these children are less likely to be taken to the doctor for treatment of chronic illnesses like “asthma” or “recurrent ear infections” (Hoffman & Paradise, 2008). It boggles the mind to know that “uninsured newborns, even though they had more severe