National Care Coordination Standards for Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs

The National Care Coordination Standards for Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs (CYSHCN) outline the core, system-level components of high-quality care coordination for CYSHCN. These standards are designed to help state officials and other stakeholders develop and strengthen high-quality care coordination for children with the goal of identifying and assessing the need for care coordination, engaging families in the care coordination process, building a strong and supportive care coordination workforce, and developing team-based communication processes to better serve children and families.

This brief describes key considerations and challenges in care coordination quality measurement and identifies sample metrics that could be leveraged to evaluate the quality of care coordination systems.

There are a variety of approaches that states can use to finance care coordination services for CYSHCN through Medicaid. Financing of care coordination is critical to the quality and sustainability of these services. This brief highlights key components and themes across five states’ approaches to financing care coordination.