Children Healthcare Industry Medicare 

Foster children's health would benefit from electronic medical records

Partner: 
North County Times
Summary: 

California’s foster care system often does a poor job of meeting foster children’s health needs, thanks to the often haphazard way their medical records are kept. By law, each time a foster youth in California is relocated, a comprehensive paper file of their medical records called a “health passport” is to be promptly forwarded with them to their new caregiver. But this doesn’t always happen, according to many foster care experts -- sometimes with potentially serious consequences. A growing number of child-welfare advocates are calling for the creation of a statewide electronic health passport system that would allow authorized health care providers to access a foster youth’s medical history online.  Advocates say that such a computerized system could greatly improve medical care for already-traumatized children who have suffered more than their share of hardship and deprivation.

Results
Health care system struggles to follow foster kids
David Freed, CHCF Center for Health Reporting | July 28, 2011
San Marcos resident Patty Boles has taken in more than 100 children during three decades as a foster mom. She specializes in caring for the most medically fragile kids the system has to offer, and has adopted 10 of them. If there's one thing Boles has learned over all those years, it's that the system often does a poor job of meeting foster children's health needs, thanks in no small measure to the often haphazard, increasingly archaic way their medical records are kept. "The way it works right now," said Boles, president of the North County Foster Parents Association, "is a huge problem."
Read More
Results
Multimedia: Patty Boles, San Marcos foster mother
Lauren M. Whaley, CHCF Center for Health Reporting | July 28, 2011
Read More
Results
An "extraordinary" academy amid orange groves
Chris Nichols, North County Times | July 28, 2011
Take away the blue-trimmed cottages next to San Pasqual Academy's main office, and at first glance, you would think you had stumbled across a traditional high school amid the orange groves and brown, boulder-pitted mountains outside Escondido. Boisterous teens laugh and joke with each other outside the academy's cafeteria, some wearing baggy shorts, others wearing baseball caps. Others sit quietly inside sending text messages. A few students sport lettermen's jackets. But when appearances are peeled away, it's clear this academy is no ordinary place. The rural campus serves as a first-of-its-kind high school and residential home for 130 foster teens from across San Diego County.
Read More
Results
Texas automates way to better health care
David Freed, CHCF Center for Health Reporting | July 28, 2011
While California officials continue to debate how best to create a computerized medical records system for foster youths, their counterparts in Texas three years ago launched their own Web-based system. The benefits, they say, already have proven invaluable. Texas in 2008 became the first state in the nation to implement an online health passport system through which foster parents, health care providers, case workers and other authorized users statewide can access and update the medical histories of foster children as they wend their way from placement to placement, often between counties.
Read More
Results
In Congress, psychiatrist pushes for foster health care
David Freed, CHCF Center for Health Reporting | July 28, 2011
In 2008, Congress passed legislation broadly hailed as the most sweeping reform of federal child welfare policy in a decade. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., mandated among other elements that each state develop a plan for "the ongoing oversight and coordination of health care services for any child in a foster care placement." Now, more than two years after then-President George W. Bush enacted McDermott's "Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act," the congressman concedes that there have been few measurable improvements in health care delivery for foster youth, lost amid the nation's stubbornly weak economy.
Read More
Results
Health records neglected, lost for some foster children
David Freed, CHCF Center for Health Reporting | July 28, 2011
Foster children in San Diego County have Rady Children's Hospital to help keep track of their health records and maintain quality medical care, but many others elsewhere in California are not as fortunate. Foster youths are frequently moved from home to home. That usually involves a change in physicians and dentists that can increase the chances of their records, called "health passports," being left incomplete ---- especially when a child is moved from one county to another, according to child welfare advocates.
Read More
Results
Inland Empire nonprofit automates records, speeds care for foster children
David Freed, CHCF Center for Health Reporting | July 28, 2011
For doctors and nurses who treat foster children these days in the Inland Empire, instant access via the Internet to their patients' comprehensive, updated medical histories is no futuristic dream. It's reality. The nonprofit Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP), which provides HMO-like coverage to about 4,000 foster children in San Bernardino and western Riverside counties, has made their medical histories available online to registered health care providers since 2008, becoming what is believed to be the first major entity in California to do so.
Read More