A hearing clinic trying to balance financial reality with needs of children on Medicaid reaches out for community support.
Project: Sound at Stake
While nearly half of Florida's kids rely on Medicaid, the program has battled persistent problems that have often left children without proper care. Reporter Maggie Clark of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune shares five key lessons from her reporting deep-dive.
Maggie Clark reported this story with the support of the Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism and the National Health Journalism Fellowship, programs of USC Annenberg’s Center for Health Journalism....
Kids need access to health care and healthy food, and they need their parents to be educated to advocate for them.
Project: Dental debate leaves out kids
In 2014, only 32 percent of Medicaid-enrolled children received any oral health care, according to Florida data submitted to the federal government. Without proper dental care from the time children sprout their first tooth, they can be set up for a lifetime of tooth decay and cavities.
Project: State doctors to be surveyed
A local community foundation has teamed up with one of the nation's leading public health researchers to survey more than 5,000 pediatricians throughout the state on their interactions with the Florida Medicaid program.
Jennifer’s experience in Florida’s Medicaid system isn't unique: She waited three months for her son’s appointment and drove 50 miles, only to have the doctor spend five minutes with him, ignore her concerns and tell her to go someplace else.
Malik Stanton is among 2 million children in Florida — about half the state’s under-20 population — who depend on the state’s $24 billion Medicaid program for health care. That same health care system very nearly let him die.
In pediatric practices across Florida, doctors are struggling to serve patients in the face of paltry reimbursement rates and more intense demands from Medicaid insurance companies.
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