Will your insurance company cover what could be considered a cosmetic treatment for your baby? It might if you can get a doctor to give that issue a specific diagnosis. It seems as though the Back to Sleep campaign has produced some unexpected, and unwanted, results.
Does your baby have a flat spot at the back of his or her head? If so, you are not the only parent who has noticed this strange phenomena. Some people are referring to this condition as “flat head syndrome”. Oddly enough, your baby’s flat head may have happened as a result of something that you were doing to protect your baby.
The Back to Sleep campaign started sometime in the 1990’s. The basic idea was that parents should place infants on their backs when the baby is going to sleep in a crib, playpen, or pretty much anywhere else. This was explained as a way that parents could protect their babies by lowering the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).
The exact cause of SIDS is unknown. However, there are some factors that have been identified as increasing the risk of SIDS. The Back to Sleep campaign emphasizes that babies who sleep on their stomachs have an increased risk of SIDS. This isn’t the only thing that can increase the risk of SIDS, but it is one that most people have heard about.
I spent a big part of the 1990’s as an employee of various day care centers, and have spent a lot of time providing care for infants. At the time, I remember being told that all babies, from that moment on, would be placed onto their backs when the baby was taking a nap. I can recall reading news articles that suggested that SIDS was caused when babies inhale the chemicals that are in flame retardant bed sheets.
Unexpectedly, this practice caused a lot of babies to have a noticeable flat spot at the back of their heads. Parents might call it “flat head syndrome”, but your doctor is going to call it positional plagiocephaly. This is a fancy phrase that means something like “a skull that is deformed due to the position that it was in for too long”. It isn’t anything harmful, but it may look a bit strange to a worried parent.
Researchers from the Texas Department of State Health Services noticed that the number of cases of positional plagiocephaly have skyrocketed between 1999 and 2007. In short, this is because of a quirk in health insurance. If you want your insurance company to cover the cost of treatment for that flat spot on your child’s head, you must first get your doctor to make an official diagnosis of positional plagiocephaly. On paper, it looks like there are suddenly more cases of “flat head syndrome”. In reality, it may have more to do with a specific health insurance requirement.
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