Imagine Pediatrics brings care home for kids with disabilities

For parents of children with significant disabilities and complex health needs, it’s not always easy to get to a provider.

And as parents well know, problems often arise beyond normal business hours.

Imagine Pediatrics is working to serve a pediatric population with a host of health challenges. The pediatric medical group launched in 2023 and offers virtual care and in-home services for patients with physical and intellectual disabilities. And those services are available around the clock.

After serving 18,000 patients in its first year, Imagine Pediatrics has served about 55,000 patients this year, says Marcia Macphearson, the company’s chief commercial officer.

Imagine Pediatrics announced in September that it raised $67 million from investors. The company also earned the 2025 HLTH Kid’s Health Best in Class honors at the Digital Health Hub Foundation Awards, presented at the HLTH conference last month.

Imagine Pediatrics is focused on kids with special health care needs, and Macphearson says, “We draw a bigger circle around that than most might think.”

“What we're doing is focusing on children who have a combination of 41 different types of conditions across both medical and behavioral kinds of condition categories,” she says.

The company’s clinicians work with the child’s care team and supplements those services. Imagine works with pediatricians, specialists, nursing agencies, and medical equipment providers.

“Our model is very much built to expand and augment and extend access to care,” Macphearson says. “We purposely don't replace the pediatrician or the specialist. That's a really important aspect of what they get their care for, and we're not trying to take that over, but we can stand in the gap when it's hard to get access to that care.”

Imagine’s team coordinates with the child’s care team to get to a pediatrician or specialist when necessary, but can also fill a gap if the child’s providers aren’t available quickly.

“If they're not in a 15-minute appointment window with their pediatrician or a specialist, we're there for them 24/7, and we're doing that virtually, and then in the home. They can get us whenever they want. It's very convenient, so they have no barriers to care,” Macphearson says.

The approach alleviates headaches for parents, handling needs like blood tests in the home without a trip to an office.

“It's a lower effort for the caregiver, a lower stress level on the patient,” Macphearson says. “And then it's lower cost, because if you have to transport a child with special health care needs, sometimes you have to arrange non-medical transportation. And then some of these patients, when you move them around, it actually increases their fragility.”

Imagine’s clinicians can also help guide families who may be wondering if they need to take their child to the hospital if they aren’t feeling well, and can offer guidance to avoid a trip to the emergency room that may not be needed.

“It's a balm for these caregivers, who, many of them, are making life and death choices for their child every day,” Macphearson says. “And if they're doing that on their own, they're just going to take them to the ER, which is what you would expect them to do. So we can help them have another kind of clinical outreach to help coordinate that.”

The vast majority of Imagine Pediatrics patients are covered by Medicaid.

“We started off very focused on serving the underserved and helping those caregivers who have a harder time to access, because sometimes there's limited access for pediatric patients in Medicaid,” Macphearson says. Imagine has just begun patients on commercial insurance in recent months.

Many of Imagine’s families are facing serious financial difficulties. Due to the demands of caring for kids with complex needs, some have limited ability to work outside the home. Imagine’s team also helps patients address some of those challenges.

“We’ve helped get electricity turned back on and helped find new housing. So our social services team really wraps around the clinical mode,” Macphearson says.

Imagine is guided by a patient family advisory council that’s made up of caregivers of those with special needs, and they help shape the company’s work and product development, she says.

The company’s secret sauce is “personalization,” Macphearson says.

“We've got a ton of data and analytics that underpins that, but I think the secret sauce is having a clinical model that's personalized like that, at scale, underpinned by a lot of data,” she says.

“The clinical programming is really important, but you can't activate the right clinical program in the moment of need, unless you really know that patient,” she adds. “And so we do that through the analytics that we have, and the way that we engage the patients and caregivers.”

• Read more: HLTH 2025: Key takeaways from the health tech event