Foster care on kids

In accordance with the report last summer, there are a big number of kids in Pennsylvania on Medicaid, especially those who are under foster car or those who are taking psychiatric medicines according to the state officials during the announcement. They have included the pre-authorization for the antipsychotics, thus it develops the guidelines for the psychiatric medicine use thus making the electronic dashboard that will make it simpler for the state department of the human services to keep up with what the kids are taking.

In April, there is a child psychiatrist that offer a telephone based service consultation that starts in giving assistance to the doctors, secretaries of the doctors along with nurses who are giving decisions with regards to the medicines. In July, the department will start to provide training to the caseworkers and to caregivers about the psychiatric medicines. According to the DHS secretary, a lot of kids under the foster care have been abused or most of them were not given enough attention and care by their family. It is not right to prescribe them with unsuitable medicines to solve their health issues.

Health insurance program

The authorities have spoken to a Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, it is the home of the Policy Laboratory where the research program that handled the psychiatric drug used by kids on Medicaid, which is the health insurance program given by the state health department to the needy and hungry people. The lab not just focuses in investigating about the issues, but they also look for solutions to solve them.  According to a pediatrician who happened to be the directory of the Policy lab has just said that it is not just adequate to lessen the medicine being used by the patients.

It is just so simple to eliminate the medicines, he insisted. Kids along with the caregivers also need an access to non-drug treatments like therapies. The state on the other hand requires more services, he added. Moreover, there is an added issue and that is quite hard for foster families to take care of the kids who are also going through the treatment in the middles school. He also added that this is not an easy service that can be given right away.  The lab has been operational with the state and with the local behavioral health givers to access some of the non-drug treatments available for their improvement.

In June of 2015, the lab has just reported that there are more than 1/5 of the foster kids given antipsychotic drugs in 2012 if it will be compared with the 5% of all the kids on Medicaid. That same year, there has been 718,000 kids in PA ages 3-18 on Medicaid. Among the 18,000 of them were under foster care. More than ½ of the kids are taking antipsychotic drugs and they were also given off label, because the pills given to them were not yet approved to treat certain conditions. 35% of the patients suffer from ADHD, but there were no records of psychosis.