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Will the United States Ever Have a Coherent Workforce Policy for Children's Health Care?

Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2004;158:13-14.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Pediatrics and children's health care are not synonymous. A pluralistic mix of physician specialists and nonphysician health care professionals provide services to this nation's children. There is unlikely to be a day in the foreseeable future when pediatric-trained professionals provide all services to children. Individuals 17 years and younger make about 23% of total visits to family physicians.¹ Coherent workforce policy designed to strengthen children's health care must account for this diversity in medical training.

In this issue of the ARCHIVES, Freed et al² provide insight into the types of physicians providing care to our nation's children. The strength of their study is its 20-year time trend analysis using data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS). The authors report that the proportion of children's nonsurgical visits made to pediatricians has increased from 56% in 1990 to 64% in 2000. Ferris et al³ used the same data source to . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Christopher B. Forrest, MD, PhD
Department of Health Policy and Management
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
624 N Broadway, Room 689
Baltimore, MD 21205
(e-mail: cforrest@jhsph.edu)

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