Well-Child Visit in Mississippi

Mississippi

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that all infants, toddlers and children receive routine preventive visits throughout their life, known as well-child visits. Younger children require more frequent visits due to their rapid development.

The benefits of well-child visits include:

• Preventing illness through routine immunizations. 
• Tracking growth and development. 
• Having opportunities to discuss parental concerns about child development, behavior, sleep and eating.
• Developing a strong patient-provider relationship.
• ADHD testing and identification.
• Lower use of emergency care services.

As individuals enter adolescence, they experience a number of transitions that may require unique health care solutions and conversations. During this stage, adolescents experience rapid physical growth, changing hormones and sexual maturity. Social factors and behaviors that lead to morbidity and mortality are often initiated in adolescence, which makes it a critical time for education, prevention and early intervention.

The prevalence of having one or more preventive visits in the last year is higher among:

• Children ages 0-5 years compared with those ages 6-17.
• Non-Hispanic white children compared with non-Hispanic Asian and Hispanic children.
• Children who come from higher-income households.
• Children from households where the adult has a higher level of education.

Further, studies have shown that children of mothers who work full time without paid vacation or are uninsured or on public insurance are less likely to have had a well-child visit in the past year.

There are several alternative methods of delivering well-baby visits that may improve access and use, including:

• Group well-child visits.
• Providing well-child visits in alternative settings, such as day care centers.
• Providing well-child visits by alternative providers, such as physician assistants, nurse practitioners and parent educators.

Additional benefits of these alternative programs include allowing physicians greater availability to care for children with complex medical problems, as well as being more cost-effective and better at serving low-income populations. Under the Affordable Care Act, insurance plans must cover well-baby visits. Depending on the insurance plan, well-child checkups may be available at no cost.

When surveyed, adolescents identified more and different barriers to receiving well-child visits than their parents, and minimizing those barriers may increase their use of well-child visits. Forgetting an appointment or failing to schedule one is a common barrier and modern tools such as text message reminders can help increase primary care usage. The implementation of the Affordable Care Act resulted in a moderate increase in preventive care use by adolescents, particularly Black, Hispanic and low-income adolescents.

Increasing the proportion of adolescents who received a preventive health care visit in the past year and increasing the proportion who speak privately with a physician or other health care provider during a medical visit are Healthy People 2030 objectives.

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O’Leary, Sean T., Michelle Lee, Steven Lockhart, Sheri Eisert, Anna Furniss, Juliana Barnard, Doron Shmueli, Shannon Stokley, L. Miriam Dickinson, and Allison Kempe. “Effectiveness and Cost of Bidirectional Text Messaging for Adolescent Vaccines and Well Care.” Pediatrics 136, no. 5 (November 2015): e1220–27. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2015-1089.

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