Health Supervision Visits ("check-ups" or physical exams) are a wonderful opportunity for our pediatricians and nurses to perform a complete physical examination and review your child's medical history and immunization status. It is also a time for us to update family medical history, review age-appropriate safety information and to perform important screening of your child's growth, emotional and social development, blood pressure, vision and hearing. Occasionally, we perform laboratory screening for cholesterol and anemia, along with other tests depending on your child's individual risk factors for a given health problem. For older children and teens, these visits are a chance for us to check on educational successes and goals, and to perform necessary screening for sports participation.
As you can tell from the above list, these visits are comprehensive, and we take this part of our job very seriously! When performing health supervision visits, our practice follows the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics "Bright Futures" program.
Because of the time involved, yearly health supervision visits may not be the best time to address chronic health issues such as asthma, diabetes or ADHD in great depth. However, we will always make every effort to identify all significant health issues during check-ups, renew all prescriptions and give you advice about follow-up recommendations. If your child has special needs, please ask your pediatrician or nurse to make sure your child is listed on our Registry of Children with Special Healthcare Needs. This will help ensure that your child has access to our office's care coordinators, who can assist you with specialty appointments and referrals and make sure that all of our office personnel are aware of any particular needs your child may have when you visit our clinic (longer time for appointments, picture boards for better communication, etc.). In addition, our care coordinators will contact you prior to all health supervision visits so we are better prepared for the visit.
Fortunately, most managed-care organizations understand the importance of health supervision visits, and most of them will cover the cost of these visits on a yearly basis. Most insurance companies charge a copay for these visits. If there is a need and time is available during the health care visit to address a significant medical issue (ADHD, asthma, chronic headache, obesity, etc) in detail, or if the visit includes any special screening or laboratory testing that is medically necessary, there will be extra charges incurred. It is very important that you check with your insurance company prior to these visits so that you understand the rules of coverage for your policy. Most policies allow one physical exam per calendar year. However, some policies may require 365 days or more in between yearly physicals. So, if your child's birthday is March 1st and you have your yearly visit on March 10th, they will not cover the next one unless it occurs after March 10th of the following year! Our appointment schedulers will try to remind you about this possibility when you call to schedule a visit, but they often don't know the particular nuances of individual policies. Similarly, some insurance policies cover routine hearing and vision screening, and some do not. When you bring your child for a yearly check-up, please let us know if you have had your child's hearing or vision screened by a specialist so that we will not duplicate these important services.
