Who Sees the Young Women? A Resource-Sharing Model for Providing Comprehensive Adolescent Women's Health Care

Female adolescents are underserved in military medicine. This article describes an innovation in preventive care created to address the unmet health needs of female adolescents at a large military community hospital. A "Teen Women's Health Clinic" was created through shared resources between the Departments of Pediatrics and Gynecology. Female teenagers visited the clinic for routine gynecologic care, preventive health maintenance, acute care treatment for gynecologic and general complaints, and subspecialty referral consultation for adolescent medicine. The mean appointment fill rate from May 2001 through April 2002 was 93.8% (range, 63-127%). The mean no-show rate was 16% (range, 0-27%). There was minimal cost to the program. Comprehensive teen women's health with acute and preventive adolescent health care is achievable at the community hospital level at little expense through cooperation between departments. The clinic was well attended, on average working near full capacity, with a low no-show rate for teenagers. Reproduction of this model may be achieved throughout the Department of Defense at minimal cost.