Acquisition of services recommended by a multidisciplinary medical diagnostic team for children under three years of age evaluated for developmental delays.
After multidisciplinary medical diagnostic teams evaluate children with developmental delays, they recommend to parents that they seek specific services, but the team rarely knows which services are obtained. We sought to determine which services pursued by the parents were actually acquired and to determine if there were barriers to the acquisition of services. In a diagnostic clinic located in a teaching hospital in an urban setting, we evaluated 92 children less than 3 years of age mainly from an inner city population. At a family conference, the parents had indicated an interest in pursuing an average of 1.87 +/- 1.34 social services, 1.70 +/- 1.32 educational services, and 3.61 +/- 2.31 medical services recommended by the team. Four months after the family conference, the actual services obtained by families included 38.5% of the social services, 70.87% of the educational services, and 71.36% of the medical services. Significantly fewer social services were obtained than educational and medical services.
Roizen
N J
NJ
Department of Pediatrics, University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, IL 60649, USA.
Shalowitz
M U
MU
Komie
K A
KA
Martinez
S
S
Miller
L A
LA
Davis
S
S
D002641:Chicago; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002658:Developmental Disabilities / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D018479:Early Intervention, Educational; D004519:Education, Special; D005260:Female; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010348:Patient Care Team; D012017:Referral and Consultation; D012947:Social Work; D014505:Urban Population