A medical financial partnership in a pediatric medical home

The Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program is an underutilized free taxpreparation service that directly addresses poverty by maximizing tax refunds. A pediatric medical home (PMH) with an embedded VITA site provides an excellent opportunity for a medical-financial partnership. We sought to assess the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of caregivers of children who used a PMH after embedding a VITA site. We found that a PMH-VITA site was a convenient, trusted, useful, and potentially tax-filing behaviorchanging intervention. Importantly, most caregivers who did not use the PMH-VITA site had no knowledge of availability of free tax filing services but would consider using one the following year. Improved marketing is needed to increase utilization in our target population.