A Guide to Screening for the Early, Periodic Screening Diagnosis and Treatment (EPSDT) Program Under Medicaid

This booklet, recently distributed to Fellows of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), is the first of a series of guides being sponsored by the Social and Rehabilitation Service as a part of its responsibility for implementing a law enacted seven years earlier.

Given the task assigned to them, Drs. Frankenburg and North have done an exemplary job and are to be highly commended. Approximately one quarter of the content deals with principles that should govern the organization and administration of a program. The authors wisely recommend the selection of a setting wherein the child receives his comprehensive and continuing pediatric care as the setting of choice for the Early, Periodic Screening Diagnosis and Treatment (EPSDT) program. Recognizing that the best is often inaccessible to the underprivileged, they also describe programs that can build from alternative settings such as schools, mobile clinics, etc, with all their accompanying fragmentation of care.