Six Core Elements of Health Care Transition

(2020, July) | Useful for sharing with youth with disabilities, their families, and their health care professionals

Health care transition, or HCT, is the process of moving from a child/family-centered model of health care to an adult/patient-centered model of health care, with or without transferring to a new clinician. It involves planning, transfer, and integration into adult-centered health care. The goals of health care transition are:

• To improve the ability of youth and young adults with and without special health care needs to manage their own health care and effectively use health services; and
• To ensure an organized process in pediatric and adult health care practices to facilitate transition preparation, transfer of care, and integration into adult-centered health care.

There’s a federally funded national resource center on health care transition (HCT) called Got Transition®. Got Transition’s Six Core Elements of Health Care Transition™ 3.0 is the widely adopted approach called for in the 2018 Clinical Report on Health Care Transition from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the American College of Physicians. The Six Core Elements define the basic components of a structured transition process and include customizable sample tools for each core element. The Six Core Elements are tailored to the type of practice facilitating the health care transition and are presented in three distinct packages:

• Transitioning Youth to an Adult Health Care Clinician
  (For use by Pediatric, Family Medicine, and Med-Peds Clinicians) This package is available in English and Spanish. There’s also a customizable version and a companion Implementation Guide to help clinicians integrate the Six Core Elements into their practice with youth/young adults and parents/caregivers, beginning early in adolescence and continuing into young adulthood.
• Transitioning to an Adult Approach to Health Care Without Changing Clinicians
  (For use by Family Medicine and Med-Peds Clinicians) This package is also available in English and Spanish, has a customizable version and a companion Implementation Guide with practical strategies, tips, and examples.
• Integrating Young Adults into Adult Health Care
  (For use by Internal Medicine, Family Medicine, and Med-Peds Clinicians) This third package has similar components to the first and second packages.

Got Transition® also makes available a substantive FAQ page on the Six Core Elements, at:
https://www.gottransition.org/six-core-elements/frequently-asked-questions.cfm