A proposed children’s health check is set to lay the foundations for the Thriving Kids initiative to be effective, but don’t expect it to resemble its predecessor too closely.
The federal government has unveiled new plans to support children’s health in the form of a Medicare-funded development check for early childhood, the first such item since the ‘Healthy Kids Check’ that ceased in 2014.
The Healthy Kids Check was primarily focused on preparing children health-wise for entry into school.
Proposed as part of Thriving Kids advisory group report, the new item would focus more on supporting the social-emotional development of children along with major health milestones.
The RACGP has welcomed the planned MBS inclusion.
“It’s going to help across the board because GPs who already work in this space will be able to give more time from the practice, particularly by using the whole team, like our practice nurses to help out,” RACGP Specific Interests Child and Young Person’s Health Chair Dr Tim Jones told The Medical Republic.
“By allowing that time to be taken, it’s going to encourage more GPs to invest in delivering that care.
“We want to make sure our members get lots of support to roll out these reforms to their practices.
“There’s going to be a lot of organic training that happens, just because as more and more GPs start to take the time to have those long, supportive discussions with families about how they’re travelling and what they need.”
While the most current iteration of the child health check has come from the Thriving Kids taskforce, the RACGP has been lobbying for such an item for several years.
The Thriving Kids recommendation for health check points out that, while there is ‘no guarantee’ that the item will be bulk-billed every time, health-assessment items present extremely high rates of bulk-billing (99%).
So far, it has been reported that this will be a one-off assessment to help identify developmental delay in addition to neurodevelopmental differences in children.
“Across the board” support for the item has been reported by the RACGP, with Dr Jones also signalling that this can kickstart further GP support in the leadup to the MBS introduction.
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“I’m collaborating with a few organisations at the moment on resources for GPs around delivering the sort of care that Thriving Kids is suggesting,” Dr Jones told TMR.
“[That includes] ways of incorporating developmental checks into your practice, enhanced resources for supporting the wellbeing and positive development of kids.
“We’ll be very much focusing on the principles that underpin these reforms … this year.
“We think that’s going to be a very proactive way of investing early in what will help kids do well with their health, and I think it will be fundamental to those reforms.”
Dr Jones also emphasised that the proposed new reform bears minimal resemblance to the Healthy Kids check which – in his words – “didn’t achieve its goals.”
“As to why there’s been such a gap, I think it’s been stalled in the reforms on what’s called foundational supports that were suggested many years ago, but it looks like we start finally seeing the fruits of that now,” Dr Jones told TMR.
