Medical needs of severely developmentally disabled persons residing in the community

Data on the health needs and utilization of medical services were collected on 27 severely developmentally disabled persons residing in the community in order to make recommendations regarding the development of a network of generic services to meet those needs. A surprisingly low incidence of acute illness and emergencies was found, contradicting previous authors' assertions that such a population has excessive medical needs and therefore cannot be served in the community. On the contrary, community placement proved to be advantageous to this group, as they gained access to specialty medical services that were previously unavailable to them as residents of a large public facility.