While a model clinic in Queens provides health care for children with long-term special needs, some doctors feel similar children’s needs are being neglected in the national debate over health care reform. Health reporter Kafi Drexel filed the following report.

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For example, an infant patient named Isabella Valazquez came into the world three months early at two pounds, and underwent heart surgery when she was just 20 days old. Daquana Purnell, 15, has cerebral palsy and heads to a pediatric after-school program every day for tutoring, nutritional care and physical therapy.

Yet as the national health care debate continues, the doctors in charge of their care worry that most children like Purnell and Valazquez are being forgotten.

“Kids with chronic medical problems who require care outside the hospital are currently not covered, due to a lot of the problems that exist. And there's no discussion about them in health reform,” says Dr. Edwin Simpser, the chief medical officer at St. Mary's. “Just to give you an example, we have a wonderful program called the CHIP program -- Child Health Plus -- to try to help insure some kids that don't have health insurance. It covers hospitalization, outpatient visits and preventive care, but it doesn't cover the kids with chronic medical problems who need ongoing care.”

Simpser is one of many doctors pushing for a stronger focus on Medicaid reform. It is a system that often provides coverage for children most in need, but is chronically underfunded. To help lower costs, Simpser says those in charge of shaping reform might also want to pay closer attention to a model like St. Mary’s, which provides a “continuum of care.”

“The child's in the regular hospital at a very high cost for thousands of dollars a day can come to a place like St. Mary's at under $1,000 a day to get high level medical care to get rehabilitation, to get education, get holistic care and then they can be moved home,” says Simpser.

Charles Purnell, the single father raising Daquana, says he would normally be struggling to pay for care.

“It would be very hard. I mean, I'd really have to scrape every penny that I have,” says Charles Purnell.

Without the specialized care, many of the patients at St. Mary’s could wind up back in emergency rooms with ongoing complications, which is another big increase to health care costs.

Maria Valazquez, the mother of Isabella, knows that problem all too well, as her six-year-old daughter Daniella was also born premature.

“Days like this for every condition she had, for the anemia, for the hydrocephalus, check the eyes, many things,” says Maria Valazquez.

Experts hope with a new health reform bill that burdens are reduced or eliminated for families facing the same challenges as the patients of St. Mary’s.