A True Medical Home
At Quince Orchard Pediatrics, we firmly believe in the concept of a medical home for your children.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has recently released a statement describing the benefits of having a medical home and the disadvantages in using various retail-based clinics (RBC) in the community for your children’s health.
Accessible and family-centered pediatrics
The medical home model provides accessible, family-centered, comprehensive, continuous, coordinated, compassionate, and culturally effective care for which the pediatrician and the family share responsibility.
Given that the RBC is not a medical home model, the AAP is concerned with the effects of their use on health care for children and adolescents including: fragmentation of care, possible effects on quality of care, lack of access to and maintenance of a complete central health record that contains all pertinent patient information, the use of diagnostic tests without proper follow-up, possible public health issues that could occur when patients with contagious diseases are in a commercial, retail environment with little or no isolation.
Providing the best possible care
Many pediatricians use the opportunity of seeing the child for something minor to address issues in the family, discuss any problems with obesity or mental health issues, catch up on immunizations, identify undetected illness, and continue strengthening the relationship with the child and family. Together, we want to provide the best possible care for the infants, children, adolescents, and young adults in our practice.
