Errors Treating Kids?

Karen R. McAlmon, president of the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, believes that the lack of an on-site physician creates a risk of medical errors – a risk that is amplified when treating children with no pediatric specialist on site.

“If you have people who aren’t used to dealing with children and aren’t up to date on what’s new in the field, then an older treatment that’s no longer being used has the risk of being continued,” she says.

To avoid this problem, the guidelines for the new clinics say they cannot treat children age 24 months or younger.

“But even with older children, there’s more risk than with adults being seen in these clinics,” McAlmon adds.

MinuteClinic’s Ratner disagrees, explaining that all of the company’s practitioners are board-certified family nurses.

Plus, they have built-in safeguards to prevent medical errors stemming from special pediatric needs. For example, MinuteClinic has a prohibition on certain vaccines for children under 4. And if a child presents for the same condition at MinuteClinic three times in a year, the clinic has a system built in to reject the patient and refer him or her to a pediatrician or specialist.

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