A view of Danish pediatric care

The Danish social system provides competent, accessible, continuous, and coordinated medical care to the pediatric population. The pediatrician does not deal with the routine aspects of well-infant and child care but is rather hospital based and acts on consultant to the generalists in his district. The generalist has the primary role in providing health care to the population in a program where everyone is obliged to participate and no one is excluded or ineligible for any reason. The American obsession with frequent, periodic examinations for infants, children, and young adults does not exist under the Danish pediatric health system. Hospital emergency rooms are used for truly emergent circumstances and not for episodic care.