Bright Futures and PCC EHR Enhance the Functionality of your Well Visits

Enhance the Functionality of your Well-Child and Preventive Care Visits

Bright Futures guidelines for the preventive care of children were compiled as a tool for use, not as a text book that winds up on the shelf, says Dr. Joseph Hagan, a Vermont pediatrician who co-authored the guidelines.

Hagan also helped PCC integrate the guidelines into its pediatric-focused EHR.

“I honestly believe that these guidelines are different,” Hagan says of the strategies that focus on conducting well visits in a way that promotes health, prevents disease and includes families in learning about the physical and emotional development of their children.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the federal government agree; both consider Bright Futures principles and strategies the standard for the practice of preventive pediatric care.

Bright Futures' place in national health insurance reform was recently cemented in the Affordable Care Act, which says health plans must cover preventive care for children as outlined in Bright Futures guidelines.

In an online statement issued in July, in which she talks about the provision for preventive care under health reform, AAP Immediate Past President Judith S. Palfrey refers to Bright Futures as the “definitive standard of pediatric well-child and preventive care.”

It is this standard that is integrated into PCC EHR – creating a comprehensive, pediatric-focused system that functions in accordance with health reform expectations.

Hagan says his practice uses PCC EHR to increase the “value and content” of each well visit. The integration of Bright Futures guidelines into the system, he says, adds a level of thoroughness that contributes to “meaningful use,” and may make insurance company audits a much smoother process.

PCC EHR's inclusion of Bright Futures can also enhance the speed and efficiency with which the average 18-minute well visit is conducted. In PCC's system, the guidelines are incorporated into templates for well visits that can either be followed “as is,” or tailored to an office's existing protocols or culture. For instance, a practice that is strong in the area of psychosocial issues may modify the pre-visit questionnaire to include more detail relating to family function.

“When we implemented Bright Futures for well visits, we followed the schema but tweaked it to the way our office does it, says Hagan, whose practice was one of the first to use PCC EHR. “PCC EHR has the ability to enhance the functionality of your well visits by allowing you to do them more thoroughly in the same amount of time, or more rapidly.”