The changing needs of children and families, together with major shifts in the broader healthcare environment, are calling on children’s hospitals to lead in new ways.

The changing needs of children and families, together with major shifts in the broader healthcare environment, are calling on children’s hospitals to lead in new ways.

In many markets, declining birthrates are reducing the base of routine pediatric volume even as children’s needs are becoming more complex. Pediatric discharges involving two or more complex chronic conditions have increased 123%, and more children are experiencing behavioral, developmental, and social challenges that compound medical complexity.1

At the same time, advances in treatment are enabling more children with serious and previously life-limiting conditions to survive and thrive, increasing demand for sustained support over longer periods.

This evolving pediatric profile is placing new demands on a care delivery model already challenged by scarce pediatric expertise and mounting financial pressure. Site-of-care shifts and declining community capacity are concentrating more high-acuity, resource-intensive care in children’s hospitals. Meanwhile, some of the fastest-rising needs require support beyond the hospital and are not consistently funded through traditional reimbursement.

Children’s hospitals will play a unique role, redefined by new capabilities

Rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and other technology, research, and care delivery are creating new possibilities for how children’s hospitals can respond to these pressures. These emerging capabilities can help extend scarce expertise, connect care more effectively across settings and over time, and accelerate discovery—allowing children’s hospitals to improve care while broadening their impact.

Children’s hospitals have always been distinguished by highly specialized pediatric expertise, research capabilities, and trusted relationships with families and communities. As care becomes more distributed and technology-enabled, children’s hospitals are uniquely positioned to serve as trusted stewards of pediatric information, evidence, and expertise across a wider network of care and support—ensuring that new models of care remain grounded in the distinct needs of children.

While not every children’s hospital will play the same role in the coming years, each will need to determine where it is best positioned to lead across three imperatives: 

  1. Build an integrated pediatric care platform that orchestrates care across settings and time
  2. Lead the next generation of pediatric discovery and innovation
  3. Mobilize the broader child health ecosystem around the unmet needs reshaping children’s health 

Partnerships will be critical across all three imperatives. The next era of care will require deeper and more intentional collaboration to extend pediatric expertise, combine capabilities and investment, and address needs that increasingly span organizations and sectors.

Our services
base case assumptions

Children’s hospitals are facing intensifying headwinds 

Pediatric needs are becoming more complex, specialized capacity is growing more constrained, and the economics of caring for children is becoming harder to sustain.

The pediatric need profile is changing 

  • US birthrates and fertility continue to decline, reducing the base of routine pediatric volume in most markets, although population growth and immigration are sustaining pediatric populations in select regions. Fertility rates are declining broadly across all regions, with rates staying flat or increasing in only 6 of the 50 largest metro markets.2
    [Map of US showing fertility rates by region and few locations with rising birth rates]