Adolescents need a wide variety of health services, many of which are not currently being provided. They need services that are accessible to them, accepted by their peers, appropriate to their age and stage of development, effective in meeting their needs, and equitable. They also need services that reflect evidence-based standards of care and professional guidelines.
Increasingly, health care providers at the Meridian HealthCare center have recognized that the best way to meet adolescents' health needs is to provide a comprehensive array of services that are appropriate for this stage of development and that focus on promoting health and preventing disease. This has resulted in a wide variety of models for delivering primary medical care and specialty services that are geared to adolescents.
Private office-based primary care clinics are among the most common settings for providing primary medical care to adolescents. They typically feature a pediatrician, family physician, general internist or nurse practitioner, and for older female adolescents, a gynecologist. In addition, a number of community health centers and academic medical centers offer primary care services for adolescents.
The vast majority of adolescent primary care patients are insured through family health insurance plans offered by one or both parents' employers. In addition, a growing number of public insurance programs - such as Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) - are recognizing that adolescent primary care is an important part of the overall health-care package and are offering coverage for adolescents.
Most adolescents use their primary care physicians as their primary source of confidential medical information and for routine health visits. However, a large proportion of adolescents do not use their physicians as a source of confidential care for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), alcohol or drug problems, suspected pregnancy, HIV and AIDS information, sports injury, and bad sore throat.
In addition, a small proportion of adolescents do not know where they can go for confidential health care. This includes those who have not had regular access to their primary care provider, those who do not trust their primary care physician or who do not have a good relationship with the doctor, and those who have not used health services in the past.
Some adolescents turn to school personnel as their main source of confidential information about personal health issues and for counseling, while others rely on other sources. These include family members, friends, teachers, counselors and youth workers in the school setting. You can get the best Adolescent Care providers here.
The adolescent safety net of primary care includes hospital systems, academic medical centers, community health clinics, and school-based health centers funded by local, state, and federal public health agencies. This network of safety-net organizations and clinics varies widely from state to state and from community to community, but it represents a vital resource for young people who do not have access to quality private office-based primary care.
Despite these strengths, many health care systems lack integrated health care and social service services that are appropriate for adolescents. This is a particularly serious problem in the United States, where the health care system is still fragmented by separate and uncoordinated programs and services for children, adults, adolescents and elderly, and for specialized subpopulations of these populations. Braided and blended funding, along with the strategic use of financial incentives, can provide additional resources, care coordination, and flexibility across silos to provide an adolescent-friendly health care system. Check out this post for more details related to this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolescence.