Regularly scheduled well-child care visits are good for keiki, study finds

HONOLULU—A study of cases involving children in Hawaii, conducted by the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM), has found that regularly scheduled checkups can reduce the odds that keiki will end up in the hospital.

The checkups, called “well-child care visits,” have been recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics since 1967. Pediatric well-child visits are most frequent when the child’s development is most rapid. Each visit includes a complete physical examination to assess the infant or young child’s growth and development and help identify problems early. Height, weight, and other important information is recorded and considered. Hearing, vision, and other tests also become a part of some visits.

In order to promote preventative care for Hawaii’s keiki, pediatrician Jeffrey Tom of Kaiser Permanente has published the results of a study conducted with his JABSOM colleagues, Drs. Chien-Wen Tseng and James Davis. The physicians analyzed the billing data of nearly 37,000 local children younger than 3½ over a period of seven years, from 1999-2006.

“We wanted to establish, for the first time, evidence that taking your child to regular well-child care visits can decrease hospitalizations above and beyond seeing the same healthcare provider,” said Tom, who began the study while a research fellow in the medical school’s Department of Pediatrics. “We found the most dramatic affect for children who have chronic diseases, such as asthma. In those cases, timely well-child care visits reduced by half the chance of hospitalization.”

The results are published in November’s Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. The study, supported by grants from the Health Resources and Service Administration and the National Institutes of Health, examined Hawaii children covered by HMSA, Hawaii’s largest private insurer.