Teens with arthritis need transition help

One in five U.S. teens with arthritis gets counseling on how to transfer to adult-oriented physicians and to obtain adult health insurance, researchers say.

Peter Scal of the University of Minnesota used information from the 2005-2006 National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs to identify adolescents ages 12 to 17 who had arthritis and to assess responses to questions about the transition to adulthood and adult-oriented healthcare.

The study, published in the January issue of Arthritis Care & Research, shows that nearly three-quarters of adolescents with arthritis were encouraged to take responsibility for their healthcare needs and about half discussed how their needs might change when they became an adult, but few received counseling on how to accomplish this transition.

"Healthcare transition is a complex set of tasks that are embedded within a complex developmental period and a complex healthcare system," the authors say in a statement. "It is not surprising, then, than the development and evaluation of services to facilitate health care transition has been slow."