Angela Turner was worried about taking her 18-month-old son Juelz Troutman to his appointment at Golisano Children's Hospital Pediatrics office last week.  

Juelz was a preemie, and has several medical needs. In his short little life he's already had the flu and RSV.

Angela doesn't drive and didn't want to get on the bus during this pandemic.  So she called to cancel her appointment.

The hospital, not wanting Juelz to a miss his vaccination, set her up with a new service through RTS Angela called "Amazing."

"They give us the list of appointments, we have our driver in our vehicle come pick up one person with their children at a time," said RTS CEO Bill Carpenter. "We take them to the appointment, we come back 70 minutes later and get them safely home. It's working beautifully."

RTS ridership is down dramatically because of stay home orders. Carpenter said its smaller buses are being repurposed for these kinds of services.

It's one tool being used to help get families to their doctor's appointments.

PCC, a software company that manages pediatric electronic records, found that since March 16th, there's been a dramatic drop in pediatric well and sick visits.  

And children are skipping those vaccinations for diseases that in some cases are far more dangerous and deadly for them than COVID-19 seems to be.
The whooping cough shot, for example, is down 42 percent, while measles, mumps, and rubella down 53 percent.

"The last thing we want to see is his kids go without their vaccinations, or the inability to track their growth and development at the early stages of life where we know we can actually do something to intervene and really, really help the child as they grow and develop," said Dr. Patrick Brophy, URMC Pediatric Chair & Golisano Children's Hospital Physician-in-Chief.  "If we alter our vaccination schedules, we're unable to be successful. We run the risk of developing other communicable disease outbreaks in the context of a pandemic. And that would be absolutely terrible."

Doctors want to tell parents the hospitals and pediatrician offices are safe. You won't see busy waiting rooms, in some cases someone will even come get you in your car to take you directly to a room.  

Turner said without all of this in place, she wouldn't have made her appointment.

"Our focus is really trying to take great care of kids and families," said Brophy.  "The last thing that we would ever want to do is put anybody in harm's way. And we're taking measures to really make it as safe as we possibly can.  Avoiding care, it just kicks the can down the road."