Outreach clinics reduce driving time by up to 46 minutes for rural children
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Key takeaways:
- In Maine, the median driving time to clinical hubs is 50 minutes for all children and 70 minutes for rural children.
- Outreach clinics reduced drive time by up to 46 minutes for children in rural communities.
Hosting pediatric subspecialty outreach clinics reduced travel time for children in Maine, especially in rural areas, but many clinics occurred less than 12 times a year, according to a study published in BMC Pediatrics.
“Among families reporting a need for pediatric subspecialty care in the United States, 24% report difficulty accessing this care,” James C. Bohnhoff, MD, MS, assistant professor of pediatrics at Tufts University School of Medicine and pediatrician at MaineHealth, and colleagues wrote. “Children referred to pediatric subspecialists may wait multiple months or travel hundreds of miles before reaching care.”
Bohnhoff and colleagues collected the addresses for pediatric subspecialty hubs and outreach clinics in Maine and estimated the driving time from each ZIP-code tabulation area to the nearest hub and nearest outreach clinic.
The researchers noted that Maine is the second most rural state in the U.S., and that all pediatric subspecialty clinics are part of just two major health systems.
According to 2020 Census estimates, there were 207,409 children and young adults aged younger than 20 years in Maine, 38.9% of whom lived further than 1 hour away from their nearest clinical hub. Median driving time among all children was 50 minutes (interquartile range [IQR], 37-72), and the median driving time among rural children was 70 minutes (IQR, 50-95).
Most children lived closer to an outreach clinic (68%) than a clinical hub, especially children in rural areas (87%).
Outreach clinics reduced median driving time by 5 to 26 minutes overall and 16 to 46 minutes for children in rural communities, according to the researchers.
Although outreach clinics brought pediatric subspecialists closer to potential patients, many of the clinics were offered only once a month or once every other month, the researchers wrote.
“These reductions in travel time were accentuated in rural areas, although this apparent improvement in access may be offset by the relative infrequency of scheduled outreach clinics compared to clinical hubs,” Bohnhoff and colleagues wrote. “Outreach clinics should be considered by policymakers hoping to improve access to care and should be accounted for in research describing the geographic access or barriers to care.”
References:
- Bohnhoff JC, et al. BMC Pediatr. 2024;doi:10.1186/s12887-024-04995-6.
- Pediatric subspecialty outreach initiatives reduced driving time to doctors. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1056004. Published Aug. 28, 2024. Accessed Sept. 5, 2024.
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