Parent Language: A Predictor for Neurodevelopmental Follow-up Care Among Infants With Very Low Birth Weight.

OBJECTIVE: Preterm/very low birth weight infants may suffer neurodevelopmental delays. Pediatricians should monitor neurodevelopment and pursue timely referrals. Yet parents who speak non-English primary languages (NEPL) report worse health care communication and fewer appropriate specialty referrals for their children. We sought to determine whether infants of NEPL parents receive recommended outpatient follow-up care for neurodevelopment. We hypothesized that these infants received less care than infants of English speakers.

METHODS: We linked paid claims from California Children's Services to clinical data from California Perinatal Quality Care Collaborative (58% linkage rate, 1541 subjects) for publicly insured infants with birth weight