By Kelly Samuelson, Student Care Manager, Concert Health
Autism affects 1 in 31 children in the United States, and families often face long wait times and limited access to behavioral health support. At WellSpan Health, an integrated health system in central Pennsylvania, the need for support has grown significantly in recent years, especially for children ages 5 to 12 with an autism diagnosis. Yet timely access to behavioral health care remains limited.
To help close that gap, WellSpan Health partnered with Concert Health, a behavioral health medical group that helps health systems integrate behavioral health into primary care through collaborative care. In partnership with Kennedy Krieger Institute, WellSpan’s Community Health Center, and WellSpan’s Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities, the organizations launched a quality improvement project to enroll 30 children and explore how collaborative care can support families earlier and more effectively.
Collaborative care is an evidence-based model that integrates behavioral health treatment into primary care through a care manager, psychiatric consultation, and a shared patient registry. In this project, children ages 5 to 12 with an autism diagnosis and one co-occurring condition are identified in primary care and connected to a dedicated care manager who provides outreach, care coordination, and follow-up. Parents and caregivers are the primary participants in Stepping Stones Triple P Level 3, a brief intervention focused on the behaviors they identify as their main concern. Weekly psychiatric case review supports treatment adjustments when needed, and progress is monitored using the Child Adjustment and Parent Efficacy Scale for Developmental Disabilities to track changes in child behavior and caregiver confidence.
Early implementation data are encouraging. The project aims to enroll 30 children, and to date 16 children have been referred, and 14 families have been scheduled for care. Seven families have completed an initial Stepping Stones Triple P session, and all seven have continued to a second visit, either completed or scheduled. Early engagement at this stage is notable, as pediatric behavioral health programs often experience drop-off between referral and treatment initiation. These early results suggest that embedding caregiver-focused behavioral support within a collaborative care framework may help children with autism and their families engage in care sooner and stay connected to support within the primary care setting.
This project also reflects the broader commitment of Concert Health to advancing collaborative care through implementation, outcomes measurement, ongoing research, and knowledge-sharing. Across its partnerships, Concert Health works to strengthen access to evidence-based behavioral health care in primary care settings while helping organizations build practical and sustainable models of care.
This early experience highlights what is possible when autism-informed behavioral health support is embedded where families already receive care. The model gives caregivers practical strategies, extends scarce specialist expertise, and helps primary care teams respond sooner to emotional and behavioral concerns. As the project continues, the goal is not only to improve outcomes for participating children and families, but also to demonstrate that collaborative care can serve as a scalable model to expand access, reduce delays, and strengthen care for children with autism in pediatric primary care settings.