Pediatric and adult care clinicians, as well as family doctors and community partners, should collaborate to better streamline the transition from pediatric care to adult care for youth with complex medical needs, according to a new position statement from the Canadian Paediatric Society.
To help patients, doctors particularly need system-based strategies, including specialized training in transitional care issues and transfer recommendations based on each patient's developmental stage.
"There is a serious lack of care integration across various sectors — especially primary and tertiary or specialty care — and this has a negative impact on youth engagement and potentially jeopardizes their health outcomes as young adults," lead author Alene Toulany, MD, an adolescent medicine specialist at the Hospital for Sick Children and assistant professor at the University of Toronto, Canada, told Medscape Medical News.
"We need to address these barriers in order to improve the quality of care and experience during transition for both youth and their families," she said.
The position statement was published online April 13.
Four Proposed Steps
In Canada, provincial and territorial funders require youth to transition from pediatric to adult care between ages 16-19 years. The current configuration of pediatric and adult services often leads to fragmentary care, which can create barriers for continuity of care, particularly for young adults with complex physical, developmental, or mental health conditions.
