Care coordination: integrating health and related systems of care for children with special health care needs
- Författare
- Committee on Children With Disabilities
- Titel
- Care coordination: integrating health and related systems of care for children with special health care needs
- Utgivningsår
- 1999
- Tidskrift
- Pediatrics
- Volym
- 104
- Sidor
- 978-981
- Sammanfattning
Care coordination is a process that links children with special health care needs and their families to services and resources in a coordinated effort to maximize the potential of the children and provide them with optimal health care. Care coordination often is complicated because there is no single entry point to multiple systems of care, and complex criteria determine the availability of funding and services among public and private payers. Economic and sociocultural barriers to coordination of care exist and affect families and health care professionals. In their important role of providing a medical home for all children, primary care pediatricians have a vital role in the process of care coordination, in concert with the family.
According to the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) definition, which was later adopted by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), "children with special health care needs are those who have or are at increased risk for chronic physical, developmental, behavioral, or emotional conditions and who require health and related services of a type or amount beyond that required by children generally."1 Primary care pediatricians and other professionals caring for children with special health care needs generally acknowledge the importance of and the need for coordination of care. New initiatives from health care reform and managed care are reshaping the traditional direct clinical care role of the primary care pediatrician to include gatekeeper and coordination roles. This transition to managed systems of care from traditional fee-for-service care has important implications for aspects of care coordination. The primary care pediatrician may be required to assume even greater responsibility for providing care coordination for their patients under capitated arrangements. This policy statement reviews the importance of the primary care pediatrician's role in care coordination in the context of the medical home.