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Six Core Elements of Health Care Transition™

Transitioning to an Adult Approach to Health Care Without Changing Clinicians Icon

Transitioning to an Adult Approach to Health Care Without Changing Clinicians

For use by Family Medicine and Med-Peds Clinicians

Click into any of the Six Core Elements to read and download more!

Transition Readiness

Assessing youths’ health care transition (HCT) readiness skills is the third element in the Six Core Elements of Health Care Transition™. Use of a standardized transition readiness assessment (TRA) is helpful in engaging youth and parents/caregivers to set health priorities, addressing self-care skill needs to prepare them for an adult approach to care at age 18, and preparing them to independently use health care services. Clinicians can use the results of the TRA to jointly develop a plan of care with youth and parents/caregivers. Clinicians should begin conducting TRAs at age 14 to 16 and continue throughout the HCT period until the youth has transitioned to an adult approach to care. Clinicians could change to the self-care skills assessment once the young adult is over age 18-21 to continue monitoring their self-care skills. For more information about the self-care skills assessment, see the implementation guide for Core Element 5. The TRA should be at the appropriate reading level, offered in languages common among your clinic population, and concise (no more than one page).

Silhouette of runner with two prosthetic legs
A group of smiling health care providers with a smiling African-American man in the foreground
Screenshot of the homepage of Center for Transition to Adult Health Care for Youth with Disabilities, with images of various smiling young people and caretakers in diamond shaped boxes.

Implementation

Read more about How to Implement the Six Core Element of Health Care Transition.
Read more information on the QI framework and methods in our Quality Improvement Primer.

Transitioning to an Adult Approach to Health Care Without Changing Clinicians

For use by Family Medicine and Med-Peds Clinicians