Pediatric Physical Rate (Data GOLD)

For years, I have promoted the concept of doing more well visits in your pediatric practice.  I believe that it’s not only a clinically superior path, it also is more financially beneficial to the practice.

Among the many positions I take during these talks is that the visits most often missed in your practices are those visits between 6 and 11 - after the imms stop and before the sports physicals begin.  These visits tend to be among the faster well visits (when compared, say, to a teen girl or those newborns), but they are just as important.

Until today, I don’t think I’ve ever officially had the data.  Just some anecdotal evidence.  And I’m not sure that anyone has ever published the data.  But here it is.  Igor did most of the work, as usual.  A quick representation of the percentage of active children who are up-to-date with their physicals for PCC clients across the country:

uptodate

Click on the image for a close-up. It’s a lot of data to squish in.

Without even knowing where the data points fall on the x-axis, I’ll bet you can guess where the 6yo line is.  Note that the number re-peaks at 11/12yo and then declines again quickly.

Although I’m glad this data supports my intuition, I’m not glad that 30% or more of the active children in a pediatric practice are overdue for their physicals.  I don’t think you will find this data anywhere else, either, which is another sad tale.

Tell me, how does your office compare?  If a PCC customer is reading, and is willing to volunteer, I’ll be glad to post your results so we can analyze them.  Of course, I’m glad to do it in private, too.  [Oh, and this is part of the Advanced Dashboard!]

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