For Children's Hospital Boston, serving as a safety net means that we provide care for all children in Massachusetts regardless of their family's ability to pay. We are actually the largest provider of medical care to low-income children in the state. Approximately 30% percent of our patients are insured by Medicaid. We're also the largest provider of inpatient and outpatient services for Boston children. We provide care for children with incredibly complex cases who often have nowhere else to turn. More than 90 percent of the sickest children in Massachusetts come to Children's, and many of the services they need are available only at our hospital.
We also provide an array of services that may be in limited supply, or not fully reimbursed by insurance. Families can access these services such as primary care at our community health center, the Martha Eliot (MEHC) and in our hospital-based Children's Hospital Primary Care Center (CHPCC) and Adolescent Medicine Practice. In total, these departments provided more than 110,000 patient visits for primary care in 2008. We also offer specialty care in areas such as mental health. Our Department of Psychiatry, one of the leading providers of mental health services in Massachusetts, had nearly 15,000 outpatient visits, more than 800 inpatient consultations and 200 inpatient admissions on the hospital campus and at MEHC.
While we provide a wide range of services to improve children's health, the hospital is by no means alone in engaging in this task. Community health centers also play a vital role in the safety net and broader health care system. Thus, we support the work of and have affiliations with ten Boston community health centers in addition to providing services at MEHC.
BY GARY R. FLEISHER, MD,
pediatrician-in-chief
and physician-in-chief,
Children's Hospital Boston
