California’s Children Need Access to Pediatric Subspecialists

When access to assessment and routine care by a pediatric specialist is delayed, patients may receive inappropriate or insufficient treatment, experience complications, and have potentially avoidable emergency department visits and hospitalizations. In response to growing concerns about pediatric patients’ ability to access subspecialty care, the Children’s Specialty Care Coalition partnered with Practical Research Solutions to survey its membership institutions on metrics related to access to care, including patient wait times and length of time for physician recruitment. This fact sheet describes the population of children with medical complexity in California and summarizes the current status of access to care from pediatric subspecialists compared to data collected in 2019.