Patient Outreach and Network Advertising Attempts Failed to Increase Access to Pediatric Patients Less than 10 Years Old at Shadyside Family Health Center (FHC)
Sidra Chavla, MD; Madeline Simasek, MD; Benjamin Skinker, MD
Background:
Nationally, pediatric patients < 10 years of age comprise a minute proportion of family medicine patient visits. This presents a challenge to residents seeking adequate outpatient experience and training in pediatric care as ACGME recommends 165 encounters involving patients < 10 years of age in a continuity clinic setting during family medicine residency.
Methods:
UPMC Quality Improvement approval was obtained. Additions to the network clinic website were proposed and added, which included components of pediatric care that were otherwise absent. Our clinic was added to the health plan pediatric referral pool per request. Letters were sent to all pediatric patient households highlighting same-day sick visits, with a nurse phone number for ease of scheduling. Outreach was made to Youth Zone and The Midwife Center requesting pediatric referrals. The 2017 and 2018 monthly resident patient census reports were utilized for July 1 through December 31 to track pediatric visits. Class averages were calculated for each six-month time period (2017-2018) and compared.
Results:
Pre-intervention included 30 residents and post-intervention included 29 residents total. Respectively pre- and post-intervention class averages were as follows: PGY-1: 6.4 pediatric encounters vs 5.1 post-intervention pediatric encounters; PGY-2: 21.3 pediatric encounters vs 17.2 post-intervention pediatric encounters, and PGY-3: 25.6 pediatric encounters vs 26 post-intervention pediatric encounters.
Conclusion:
After employing patient and system communication tactics geared at increasing outpatient pediatric visits, overall average pediatric numbers did not increase. This demonstrates that current patient outreach and network advertising methods are not sufficient for increasing pediatric care at Shadyside FHC.