Kids Get Care

Kids Get Care was a program to ensure that children receive early health services through attachment to a health care home, regardless of insurance status. The program now serves as a model for the Children's Health Initiative. The program first attaches the child and family to a medical home and health services, then helps them establish eligibility for public coverage. Kids Get Care provides health care coverage and a coordinated delivery system to provide preventives services. Case managers working with the program help participating sites deliver integrated physical, developmental, and oral health services. Kids Get Care uses community connections around participating clinic sites to identify children and enroll them in services. Community staff are educated about developmental milestones and oral health promotion so that they can support parents and refer families to a case manager to establish a health care home.

The goal of Kids Get Care was to ensure that children, regardless of insurance status, received integrated preventive physical, oral, and developmental health services.

Between September 2001 and February 2007, Kids Get Care connected 27,987 children with a usual source of care. The program trained 13,540 community agency staff members who scanned 145,000 children for developmental milestones and oral health. The percentage of two-year-olds up-to-date with Well Child Checks increased from 53% in 2001 to 75% in 2003. At one maternal health site, the average number of visits with a Maternity Support Services social worker by pregnant women increased from 2.5 in 2004 to 7.3 in 2007, and women assessed for maternal depression increased from 33% to 95%. Children under 18 months who received a dental visit increased from 337 in March-August 2005 to 1,434 over the same time period in 2006. Children aged 0-5 who were assessed by a structured developmental questionnaire increased from 5 in 2004 to 807 in 2006.