Children's health care drops 33 percent

• The share of children's health care provided by family physicians and general practitioners decreased by about 33 percent between 1992 and 2002, from one in four children's visits to one in six.1 This finding was at the heart of a report by the Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Family Medicine and Primary Care presented in June to the AAFP Task Force on the Care of Children.
• "The biggest influence is probably that the number of pediatricians has grown so much, so fast," Phillips says.
• Family physicians who responded to the AAFP's 2005 Practice Profile Survey attributed the decline to other causes as well.
• Among the 36 percent of respondents who reported a decline in the number of visits they provide to children, these reasons were cited most frequently: they don't provide maternity care; hospitals and obstetricians lead families to use other specialists; the public does not perceive family physicians as providing health care to children; they don't provide newborn care in the hospital.
• "Family physicians who don't have nursery privileges don't get new babies in their practices to the extent as those who are on 'unclaimed' newborn schedules or who take care of their existing patients' newborns," says Perry S. Brown, Jr., MD.
• Family physicians would also benefit from the AAFP and other family medicine organizations getting more involved in national public policy and advocacy for children's health issues, Brown says.
• Family medicine residency programs also have a key role to play in better equipping family physicians to take care of children, Brown says.
• Maintaining the fullest scope of practice you can is a good start, of course.
• Of course this will be an easier sell for family physicians who don't deliver babies.