American Hospital Association: How Hospitals are Reengineering Pediatric Behavioral Health Care
In late 2025, pediatric behavioral health remains in the national conversation — but the focus has shifted. Where much of the past few years’ coverage described rising emergency department wait times and workforce shortages, recent reporting increasingly highlights innovative hospital-based solutions that are transforming how children and families access care.
Across the nation, hospitals are moving beyond crisis response to redesign care systems, embedding behavioral health clinicians into pediatric clinics, forging partnerships with schools and community providers, and using telehealth to reach underserved populations. These approaches are driving earlier interventions, better outcomes, and more efficient use of health system capacity — offering real promise for an issue that affects millions of young people and their families and friends.
These real-world strategies are captured in the American Hospital Association’s recently released Integrating Behavioral Health into Pediatric Care: Hospital-led Solutions to a Growing Crisis report, which outlines five hospital case studies showing how systems are integrating behavioral health and pediatric care to address a growing clinical demand.
Hospital-Led Solutions in Action
The AHA report’s case studies illustrate how integration is taking shape across different communities and health system models:
1 | Nemours Children’s Health (Multi-state)
Nemours has embedded behavioral health clinicians within both pediatric primary care and specialty clinics. By enabling real-time consultation during well-child and specialty visits, clinicians can identify concerns early and provide immediate support or referral — reducing reliance on emergency care and long wait lists for specialty services.
2 | Children’s Mercy (Kansas City, Mo.)
This system is expanding integrated care through a Partial Hospitalization Program and coordinated behavioral health hubs that connect outpatient clinics with crisis intervention resources. Early evidence from integrated behavioral health teams suggests improved access for underserved children and more seamless transitions from acute care to ongoing support.
Read the full article via the American Hospital Association