Does your children's pediatrician require a physical once a year in order to continue seeing your child/ren? Ems has a physical once a year, but I never realized it was a requirement. The doctor doesn't require it as much as the doctor's insurance requires it. I called yesterday to get Ems an appointment so she can get another inhaler and I was told she has to have it or the doctor can't see her. Sigh... I am going to do it because Ems needs the inhaler and I love Ems doctor so it isn't worth changing. I was just curious if this is a regular requirement.
I don't think it is with ours, of course we have insurance through the state since DH works in a prison and their silly rules are pretty rediculous. Our doc's office isn't worth it anyway, they didn't even know Pat had CP (even though we had the office fax them the diagnositc sheet, and I mailed them a copy as well in case the other office was unreliable). :/
I've never been to one who required it, though when dd8 went with her last ear recheck, she automatically scheduled a 9yr check-up. I hope it goes well. Dd14 needed an inhaler refill a little over a month ago. I went in just for the script. DD had a breathing treatment in-office and got a steroid and a new allergy med script along with the inhaler! The NP said she as barely moving air around. I felt terrible!!!
I'm on a roll about insurance today...... For us, when we received our policy book, I read through front to back and learned that (to paraphrase) our policy does have the option of denying coverage for a condition if things such as a yearly physical could have detected it earlier or helped prevent the condition. It's a loophole to give them an escape route if thing get too expensive. So, yup, all my kids get yearly physicals. Roll your eyes or call me a nut, but after 4 years of dealing with different types of insurance companies, I've realized they are out to profit how they can and limit their cost as much as they can. Loop hole exsist for THEIR benefit. If you doubt me, look at the number of insurance lobbiest there are in Washington...REALLY look at law changes that have happened in your own state in the past 4 years and ask yourself who benefited/profited most from those changes? ARGH, dont get me started!!!!!
Yep... ours requires it, and it has to be at least 1 year and 1 day from the previous one, so we can't schedule it 363 days out or anything like that. I have one child who, because of a glitch in scheduling, can't get his annual physical every year until he's 2 months past his birthday! Sheesh!
I can't say ours are exactly 365 days apart, but looking back it seems Ems is always having hers in October because this is usually when she receives her flu shot. This year her appointment is on Nov 1, or tomorrow.
ours doesn't require a yearly exam. My kids haven't had exams since 2009 when we prepared to move. The same with me. It's not required for the military hospitals, at least overseas.
When my kids were on Medicaid it required a well child visit for coverage to continue. With our old insurance I could schedule their well child visit yearly and it didn't have to be 366 days from the last well child visit but it could not be one day before their birthday or insurance wouldn't cover it. With our new insurance I'm not sure-we don't vaccinate anymore and my kids are healthy and we've had insurance since May and me or the kids neither one have a doctor yet...we haven't needed one. I have been meaning to schedule us all a check-up though so we'll be a 'current patient' already when we need a doctor because new patient appointments are often times 2 weeks to 2 months out...
Our insurance changes each time the Union renegotiates a contract. I've had some that would only cover one well visit per persn within a year, TO THE DAY, and others that gave you a reasonable "grace period". My favorite, Aetna, wasn't concerned about counting the days. Not sure exactly what we've got now, but I like Aetna better!
We have had so many different insurances because Handsome's boss was always looking for the best deal. After all was said and done, I wish we were back with Kaiser. Em's doctor is wonderful. I really like her, but I would drop her in a heartbeat if we returned to Kaiser. Since the economy went downhill, we have been without insurance for more than a few years. With the exception of Handsome having to go to the ER last year or the year before and the bill from UCLA hospital for his current problem, we have been able to pay out of cash up front. The UCLA bill is going to take us at least a few months to pay off, or longer. This is why I didn't want to have Ems take the physical because it was more money on top of the bills coming in. :? Oh well! It is what it is.
I never thought about that until now. Our insurance doesn't require it, but now I am thinking I should go, because of the loophole thing someone on here mentioned. We usually only take the kids once a year when they are due for shots. This year not even that. I myself do go once a year for a physical, breast exam, blood work and all that, even though I think that they probably wouldn't catch something serious until it was too late. My father-in-law recently passed away from advanced lung cancer. It was diagnosed when he was already in stage 4 and had come down with a stroke. This is a guy who was a heart patient, and went for a full heart work-up every year, full blood panel analysis, full physical, the works. He had some sort of respiratory problems every few months, coughs and colds more frequent than normal. But none of his specialist doctors ever saw any warning signs. Healthcare sucks!!! (sometimes )
The well checks my kids have had would discover next to nothing--hearing screen, vision screen, iron check for the girls, and the last one included a check for scoliosis. That's it. My kids all have yearly hearing exams due to my hearing loss (dd11 has hearing aids) and yearly eye exams, so even those screens are pretty pointless.
Faythe's vision problem I picked up on, not the doctor. We were at Dairy Queen, and I discovered she couldn't "see" the menu board. So when we went to the doctor a few weeks later, I specifically requested a vision screening. I think as homeschoolers we need to be more diligent. Teachers are often the ones who pick up on possible concerns when it comes to a child's development. Because we don't have that "extra" set of eyes/ears, we need to be much more aware.
Two different teams of the school sytems "experts" (teacher, psychologist, OT, PT, Speech pathologist) weren't enough eyes to see the problems I could see beginning when dd 14 was 4. The first team said she was behind, but not enough to matter, and the second team (2 years later) said she was behind in written language skills, but it was my fault because I homeschooled her. (She was in K at the time.) Even one of my close friends, a special ed teacher, said my dd would absolutely have been one to fall through the cracks. She'd have just been labeled lazy. My persistence and testing outside the school system is what finally led to an accurate diagnosis. I think teachers certainly can recognize things that some may miss, but I don't think it's a sure thing. Spending one-on-one time with our kids allows us to pick up on things others may miss--as long as we don't live in denial. There are those who do!! Ds's vision problems were caught at a well check (at 4), but dd11 has amblyopia (left eye completely shut down) that wasn't caught until I took her for her first eye exam at 5. The eye doctor couldn't believe it had never been noticed, and it made her chances at full recovery slim. (It's best she'll get at 20/60 with glasses.) I didn't notice any problems, and neither did her pedi.
I will say that having some psychology classes in growth and development as well as a couple of psych classes that overlapped into the education department may have made me more aware of dd14's differences. I also taught preschool for several years, so I was able to see things that she didn't do that others her age did.
We only go to the dr. when we are sick which was next to never until we moved. I don't know if it is just us getting acclamated to the area or what but we have seen the dr. more times this month than we have in the last 10 years. Even with insurance (which is crappy) we have so much in medical debt we feel like we are drowning.
I would agree with that! I picked up on one of the K's I student taught taking steps one at a time. The only reason I noticed was because the preschool I had worked at had a list of "developmentals", and that was something recorded on it. Did you document the things you were seeing? (Or rather, the things you were NOT seeing...)
I agree. I noticed for some time that Em was complaining about eye pain. Then her piano teacher told me that Em seems to strain when reading her music. So we took Em to have her eyes checked. She was so excited because she wanted glasses. She picked out two really cute frames, but was let down when the doctor laughed and told her that she didn't need them. He said she has the healthiest eyes he has seen in a long time and they are strained from all the reading and music playing she does. lol He told her to get some weak readers if she wanted, but prescription lenses were not necessary. So we took her to the Dollar Tree and bought her a couple pairs of cute readers. I told her to be thankful she didn't need glasses, but she was still disappointed.
