Best Practices for Facilitating Access to Health Care for Children of the Poor

Despite escalating medical expenditures in the United States there remain millions of children without access to health care. This inquiry identified that best practices for facilitating access to health care are administrative appointmentkeeping supports; nonmedical supports including referrals, parent education and outreach; provider-parent relationships built upon effective communication; and usual sources of care maintained by continuity of care and a primary provider. Conversely, the use of emergency departments for preventable conditions was a costly indicator that families experienced health-care barriers. It behooves communities to consider the high cost of foregone care and work collaboratively to pre-empt suffering, to preclude loss of children’s potential and to prevent costly emergency department utilization.