Care Coordination for Children with Special Health Care Needs (CSHCN)

About the CSHCN Challenge

This challenge supports innovative technology-based solutions that improve the quality of care, enhance family engagement, and positively impact health outcomes for families of children with special health care needs (CSHCN).

Solutions should aim to improve:

  • Quality of care
  • Enhance family engagement
  • Health care outcomes
  • Saving costs to family, society and health care system

Design features should:

  • Include stakeholders across the health care system, including providers and payers
  • Propose to improve aspects of the overall health care system, with the intent of driving better outcomes for children and families

Why Innovation for CSHCN Matters

CSHCN have or are at risk for chronic physical, developmental, behavioral, or emotional conditions. They need a complex array of  health and related services beyond what a typical child needs.

For CSHCN, coordinated care by their care team, including family members, and primary, specialty, and service providers, is essential to their health and well-being. Unfortunately, communication and coordination across systems of care is often fragmented.

Too often, family members of CSHCN must bear the burden of collecting and sharing health information with different providers and settings – all in addition to caring for their child. Families deserve complete, comprehensive, and easily accessible information about their children’s health and care plans to ensure the best quality of care for their children.

The goal of this challenge is to use health information technology to organize data from different sources into one cohesive patient-centered record. Families and care team members can then receive the care coordination and planning they need and provide the best care for their children.

Phases 1 and 2 are now Closed.

Learn more about our Winners.