O2071: KidStreet: A Partial Hospitalization Program to Meet Outpatient Needs of Medically Complex Young Children

Background: Young children ( < 3 years) with medical complexity are often excluded from educational and childcare settings due to medical needs. Caregivers of CMC report needing to change jobs due to child care or having to cut down hours or leave job more than non-complex peers (Yu 2022). Nursing and hospital leadership recognized this impact on the community over 30 years ago and developed a partial hospitalization program to meet medical, therapeutic, and educational needs of young CMC living in the community.

In 2023, due to increasing demand of KidStreet, our program was restructured to increase enrollment while also increasing therapy and educational time while keeping safe staffing ratios.

Our objects are to describe outcomes of the KidStreet program including increased access after a programmatic change in 2023.

Methods: In this program evaluation, we will use aggregate patient data, annual parent satisfaction surveys, and program metrics to describe the impact of KidStreet.

Results: KidStreet has enrolled over 300 children in last 15 years with 20 children ages 6 weeks to 3 years enrolled at a time. Children are required to have a medical nursing and 2 therapeutic needs to qualify, and grouped into 2 classrooms based on development.

In 2023, the program was changed to support 32 children and, in this capacity, has enrolled 136 children. In 2025, a third classroom for children at risk for developmental delays was opened to accommodate a total of 40 children at the center. Over past 3 years, 76% of our patients had Medicaid and additional 22% had secondary Medicaid.

Annual caregiver evaluation of the program, 11 caregivers responded with 97% very satisfied with communication and collaboration of medical teams, 91% feel they always have enough input into their child’s care at KidStreet and that their child’s unique needs were always met, 98% reporting they would be very likely to refer another family to KidStreet. One caregiver described the impact: “We have felt so supported and our child has thrived… Simply life changing.”

Children at KidStreet receive on average 120 minutes of designated 1:1 therapies a week which could include speech, occupational, physical, AAC, and feeding. Therapists collaborate with educational specialist to integrate therapy goals into the classroom so children can work on therapy goals during educational time (such as holding crayon while coloring); this is unable to be analyzed. Socioemotional/behavioral, music and vision therapy are also available but not included in this analysis.

Conclusion: KidStreet is a novel model to deliver a medical therapeutic and educational program for children 6 weeks to 3 years of age with medical complexity. In this partial hospitalization program, we are able to serve children to deliver comprehensive developmental therapies and educational services while receiving nursing care in the community setting.