Alternative Payment Models to Support Child Health & Development: How to Design and Implement New Models

Description: While children have a broad set of health, social, and developmental needs, financing for services to meet those needs remains siloed. Such separation discourages coordination across health care and social services, and these rigid funding streams prevent stakeholders from customizing resources to the needs of their community’s children and families. There are opportunities to provide greater local flexibility for child-focused alternative payment models (APMs). While implementation of such models has been limited to date, the willingness of health care payers to use these new payment models for many populations and conditions signals the potential of applying APMs to children and families’ health, social, and developmental needs. This brief outlines a series of questions organizations must answer as they seek to build the core components of an APM. The brief then explores potential challenges to implementing APMs for kids’ health and development, including legal and regulatory restrictions on financing streams; collaborating across sectors that often have very different cultures and histories; and sharing different types and sources of data. Finally, the brief explores potential strategies for overcoming these challenges and implementing new and innovative APMs to support child health and development.