Doctors often record concerns about a child's speech and language before assigning a formal diagnosis. In our study, only about half of children with documented concerns had a diagnosis recorded at that visit, and many received one later. This pattern may reflect ongoing monitoring over time before a diagnosis is recorded.
Read the open-access paper from Duke and North Carolina Central University researchers at https://academic.oup.com/jamiaopen/article/9/3/ooag090/8707577
Jiang Shu, Danai Kasambira Fannin, Geraldine Dawson, Gary Maslow, Matthew M Engelhard, Lauren Franz, Benjamin A Goldstein, Using clinical notes to identify children with speech-language delay and understand differences in diagnostic timing, JAMIA Open, Volume 9, Issue 3, June 2026, ooag090, https://doi.org/10.1093/jamiaopen/ooag090