Providing comprehensive health care to children with chronic illness

To test whether a program of outreach and comprehensive health care for children with chronic disorders provides more complete care and reduces unmet health needs compared with traditional care. A pretest-posttest randomized control trial. An inner-city municipal teaching hospital. Two hundred nineteen systematically enrolled mothers of children with diverse chronic physical health conditions. A comprehensive outreach program, Pediatric Home Care (PHC), contrasted with Standard Care. Nine elements of comprehensive care established in the literature as components of a basic package of care for those with chronic conditions. The PHC intervention addressed gaps in services and improved both the acquisition and maintenance of elements of comprehensive care. These data suggest mechanisms through which comprehensive care programs may contribute to the improvement in psychological and social outcomes previously reported for those in the PHC intervention.