What are Well-Child Visits?
Well-child visits are medical appointments that include assessment of a child’s physical, emotional, and social development. These visits take place whether or not a child is sick and play an important role in maintaining a child’s health. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children ages 3-6 have a yearly well-child visit with a primary care provider.
Why are Well-Child Visits Important?
Well-child visits are a critical venue for parental education, identifying health and developmental issues early, and preventing future problems. Health plans, providers and government agencies use well-child visits as a measure of the quality of care provided to children. The state of Oregon, in partnership with the federal government, provides health insurance for nearly 120,000 children ages 1 through 5 in low-income households through the Oregon Health Plan (OHP).
Recognizing the relationship between health and education, a 2018 multidisciplinary Oregon workgroup developed a health system strategy to contribute to improved kindergarten readiness. In 2019 as part of this strategy, the Oregon Health Authority began public reporting on well-child visits for 3-6 year olds covered by OHP.
In 2019, over 68% of children ages 3-6 in OHP had one or more well-child visits statewide. However, Oregon’s measurement was below the national Medicaid benchmark of over 79%. Coordinated Care Organizations (CCOs), the local networks of health care providers that serve the OHP members, were be able to earn incentive payments based on this metric starting in 2020. Publicly reporting how Oregon compares to the national benchmark helps policymakers understand whether children are receiving the preventive care they need and where improvements may be required.
To learn more about the Medicaid well-child visit data presented here, check out our Technical Dictionary.
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Resources
To learn more about well-child visits, please visit the Oregon Health Authority:
Please remember the following
- OCID only includes children born in Oregon since 2001; ideally, the dataset will be expanded over time to represent all of the children in Oregon.
- To display race and ethnicity categories consistently across multiple data sources, OCID currently combines information from vital statistics, education, Medicaid, and child welfare records. Visit our Race and Ethnicity Data Overview to learn more.
- The Dashboard shows descriptive data, not causal relationships. In depth analyses are needed to understand why disparities or trends occur. OCID’s targeted analyses shed light on policy questions prioritized by the Governance Committee.
For more information about the details and limitations of the data, please visit our Technical Dictionary and Dataset Overview.
Ready to explore the data?
Use the interactive display below to discover how characteristics collected by state programs vary among groups of children with different well-being outcomes.
Data are a starting point for understanding children’s experiences; they do not fully describe an individual’s identity or experience.
Want to dive deeper?
Explore the interactive display below to investigate potential trends or disparities among groups of children with the same well-being outcome.
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Suggested citation: Center for Evidence-based Policy, Oregon Health & Science University. Medicaid Well-Child Visits Ages 3-6 dashboard. Oregon Child Integrated Dataset (OCID) website. https://www.ocid-cebp.org/outcome/medicaid-well-child-visits-ages-3-6/. Published [inserted ‘display updated’ date].
The Center for Evidence-based Policy partners with the Center for Health Systems Effectiveness, also at Oregon Health & Science University, on dashboard analytics.