Watching SCHIP grow up: Accomplishments and challenges in covering the uninsured

Physicians have participated in the 5-year-old children's insurance program's success but worry about its financial future.

By Jane Cys, AMNews correspondent. Oct. 7, 2002.

Soon after California launched its version of the State Children's Health Insurance Program in 1998, Marysville pediatrician Arnold Gold, MD, saw his patient numbers drop.

But Dr. Gold wasn't upset at this turn of events. In fact, he was elated. "We would like to be put out of business."

Dr. Gold is the medical director for four free clinics, which he has co-founded over the last decade with help from grants awarded by the American Academy of Pediatrics' Community Access to Child Health program. The slip in the clinics' patient numbers meant that kids enrolled in SCHIP had moved to private pediatric practices, where they were receiving regular access to such services as well-child visits and immunizations, said Dr. Gold, AAP's CATCH facilitator for California.

With former patients linked to office-based pediatricians, his clinics were free to work with more kids who needed specialty care, such as mental health services or asthma treatments.

Dr. Gold's story illustrates just one of SCHIP's successes. He is one of many physicians across the country who watched the program grow from a fancy-sounding plan approved in 1997 into a fully functional children's insurance system operating in 50 states, five territories and the District of Columbia.

Despite SCHIP's challenging infancy, physicians, lawmakers and policy-watchers label the program's first five years a success, thanks to its still-growing enrollment figures. But they're also quick to point out that some operational bumps remain and that looming funding troubles may stall or reverse the enrollment gains. [...]