Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs (CYSHCN) and Care Transitions in the Medical Home
You can improve the health and well being of CYSHCN through facilitating health care transitions!
Why focus on health care transition? Health care transitioning is the process of changing from pediatric to adult systems of health care. The goal of transition is to optimize health and assist youth in reaching their full potential. Community integration, social participation, and independent living can be facilitated through the provision of health care and services.
However, achieving this goal requires an organized transition process to support youth in acquiring independent health care skills, preparing for an adult model of care, and transferring to new providers while maintaining continuity of care.
That’s where the Texas Transition Toolkit (T3) comes in.
Why focus on CYSHCN? An estimated 15% of children and youth in the United States have special health care needs. These CYSHCN need a higher level of well coordinated, culturally appropriate services in order to realize optimal wellbeing. Currently, 90% of CYSHCN who reach adolescence are expected to live into adulthood, and unfortunately access to services decreases as CYSHCN age into adulthood .
The vast majority of CYSHCN do not receive: care in a well-functioning system (88.4%), adequate services for care transitions (87.4%), or special services to meet their developmental needs (8.5.%). More than half (56%) of CSHCN do not have health care providers work with them to understand the changes in healthcare that happen at 18 years of age. Many CYSHCN (41%) do not receive explanation on how to retain or acquire health insurance coverage as they became adults. Almost all (93%) do not have an up-to-date written plan for meeting health needs and goals.
That’s where you, the medical home provider, come in!
How to use this website to facilitate care transition:
This site contains: a searchable database of peer-reviewed articles on health care transition for CYSHCN; a searchable database of tools used by different clinics and programs to facilitate health care transition for CYSHCN; and tools for developing your own health care transition program for CYSHCN.
Use this website to, for example, understand special considerations around transitioning youth with specific chronic conditions (like Type 1 diabetes), or evaluate all the available tools for transitioning CYSHCN to adult care so you can select the tool that is right for your institution.
[Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs, 2011 Bethell, Read, Blumberg, & Newacheck, 2008 Boulet, Boyle, & Schieve, 2009 Council on Children with Disabilities, 2005 Data Resource Center for Child & Adolescent Health, n.d. White & McManus, 2013]
