Deborah Smith, OKDHS Area III Field Liaison and eight-year employee, Amy Ritchie, nurse practitioner and Dr. Deborah Shropshire, pediatrician, Children's Hospital at OU Medical Center and Pauline E. Mayer physician, provide tender, loving health care to Maddie at the Fostering Hope clinic at Children's Hospital.
To a scared, confused child, having Dr. Deborah Shropshire check her eyes, ears and throat may not seem comforting. Through the OKDHS Area III Fostering Hope program, however, Shropshire can help ensure the child – who may have never seen a doctor – leads a healthier life.
“The best child abuse prevention,” said Shropshire, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital at OU Medical Center, “is to take better care of foster kids. I believe if we work really hard with one generation, then we can interrupt the cycle and affect future generations.”
For many years, OKDHS caseworkers, foster parents and administrators recognized that foster children’s case files sorely lacked any medical history information. Shropshire, too, felt frustrated. She had provided health evaluations twice a week to children entering the Pauline E. Mayer shelter in Oklahoma City for more than four years.
“I really felt like I was practicing in the Third World,” said Shropshire. “Each time I saw a child, I didn’t know what medication had been prescribed, if any limbs had ever been broken. I was blind.”
In 2005, OKDHS leaders met with the Oklahoma Health Care Authority, as well as Shropshire, to discuss how OKDHS could access Medicaid information regarding kids coming into care. OHCA agreed to help. The Area III office hired Retha Rice, who has a medical terminology background, to request Medicaid billing information from OHCA. She receives the information within 24 hours.
“This is such a huge benefit,” said Shropshire. “Retha can give me and workers a head’s up if she sees anything significant – a seizure disorder, for instance. Previously we would have had little or no information and would have been guessing. Now it’s unbelievably different. Ninety percent of the kids coming into OKDHS care have some medical information through Medicaid.”
To further ensure children receive consistent medical care, Shropshire opened the Fostering Hope clinic at Children’s Hospital in October 2005. The clinic, open eight hours a week, sees children in foster care.
“Foster parents want to talk and learn about this child in their care,” said Shropshire. “I want to make it as easy as possible for these children to have consistency of medical care.”
With that, Shropshire has access to the OKDHS Child Welfare KIDS system that allows her and her volunteer nurse practitioner to input medical information into children’s files. She’s also piloting Web-based software that will allow other doctors to share information with each other and workers.
“Deb does a great job of educating the state about foster kids,” said Deborah Smith, OKDHS Area III Field Liaison.