Low Rate of Developmental Screening

Catherine E. Rice and colleagues report at MMWR:

The results in this report indicate that despite recommendations that all children be screened for developmental delays by health-care providers at 9, 18, and either 24 or 30 months and for ASD at 18 and either 24 or 30 months (22), the parents of only 21.1% of children aged 10–47 months reported in 2007 that they were asked by a health-care provider to complete a developmental screening tool concerning their child's development in the past year. The prevalence of physician-ordered, parent-completed developmental screening was low regardless of demographic, health-care, or risk indicators. Developmental monitoring was reported for 52.3% of children in the past year, indicating that health-care providers are more likely to use informal discussions and questions about parental concerns related to learning, development, or behavior than they are to use parent-report questionnaires. However, indications of a parental concern or risk for a developmental delay did not result in additional screening for those children. This type of informal monitoring is less likely to result in appropriate identification of children with developmental delays (9). As of 2007, only one in five children were reported to have met national standards for quality health care specified by NQF targeted by Healthy People 2020 for universal developmental screening of all young children in pediatric health-care settings.