Adolescent Primary Care Visit Patterns

James D. Nordin; Leif I. Solberg; Emily D. Parker

doi:10.1370/afm.1188

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Health education and preventive care among adolescents
M Jawad Hashim

Published on: 06 December 2010

Published on: (6 December 2010)
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Health education and preventive care among adolescents
M Jawad Hashim, Al Ain, UAE
James Nordin, Leif Solberg and Emily Parker’s article, “Adolescent Primary Care Visit Patterns” in this issue of Annals provides a sobering glimpse of the state of clinical preventive care for adolescents.
While the authors’ acknowledge the issue of misclassification of visits in coding (which is a limitation of retrospective analyses of insurance claims data), I would add that a significant amount of preventiv...
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James Nordin, Leif Solberg and Emily Parker’s article, “Adolescent Primary Care Visit Patterns” in this issue of Annals provides a sobering glimpse of the state of clinical preventive care for adolescents.
While the authors’ acknowledge the issue of misclassification of visits in coding (which is a limitation of retrospective analyses of insurance claims data), I would add that a significant amount of preventive care may be unrecorded and not coded by family physicians.
Brief targeted counseling especially for lifestyle issues such as prevention of sexually transmitted diseases; tobacco, alcohol and drug use; and safety in driving, are often included by family physicians in non -preventive visits but not coded on encounter claims (or even documented in charts).
Instead of focusing on more dedicated preventive care visits, perhaps family physicians should be trained on documenting and coding these ‘on the side’ services. This may even improve the validity of retrospective research on claims data.
Additionally, adolescents’ perceptions and trust of health education should guide delivery of preventive care in innovative ways such as in print, video and online materials.
Outcomes data such as rates of immunizations, encounters for motor vehicle accidents and sexually transmitted diseases and other lifestyle preventable issues should be encouraged for future studies of similar nature.
Competing interests: None declared
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Competing Interests: None declared.