February 2018
Texas Health Steps (THSteps) Medical Requirements and References
As a reminder, medical checkup requirements have two different components: federal mandates and state requirements.
Federal Mandates
The federally mandated components include, but are not limited to the following:
- Comprehensive Health and Developmental History:
- Tuberculosis screening
- Physical, mental and developmental histories
- Autism screening
- Nutrition screening
- Comprehensive Unclothed Physical Examination:
- Length/height, weight and BMI percentile (use age-appropriate growth graph to identify significant deviations). THSteps recommends:
- The World Health Organization growth charts for infants and children birth to 2 years of age
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention growth charts for children who are 2 years of age or older.
- Fronto-Occipital circumference
- Blood pressure
- Vision and hearing screenings
- Immunizations: Age appropriate by periodicity schedule
- Laboratory Screenings:
- Newborn
- Blood-lead level (12 and 24 months)
- Anemia (H/H at 12 months)
- Risk-based tests (lipids 9 - 11 years old and 18 - 20 years old)
- HIV testing for 16 - 18 years old
- Type 2 diabetes and STD/STI as needed per risk assessment
- Health Education/Anticipatory Guidance: These are age appropriate. To provide the best care and assure compliance, you can use the provided age appropriate forms from the THSteps website.
State Requirements
The state requirements include the following:
- Dental referral every six months until a dental home is established
- Follow-up instructions for your patient’s next preventive visit
Additionally, each page of the patient’s record needs to include the patient’s name and identifiers with each entry signed by the provider, with credentials and date.
THSteps Quick Reference Guide
We know that you and your staff strive for accuracy, so we have provided the link to the Texas Medicaid and Healthcare Partnership THSteps Quick Reference Guide that summarizes the process for billing and procedure codes.
Additional Resources
- THSteps overview courses provided by the Texas Department of State Health Services and the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. Continuing education contact hours are provided and include: CME, CNE, Social Workers, Certified Health Education Specialists and Certified Community Health Workers
- THSteps required forms for documentation
- THSteps periodicity schedules and current notices for providers