Nearly half of all children in the U.S. are covered by Medicaid, but many of their families struggle to find pediatricians who will accept their insurance — creating concerning pediatric care deserts in low-income communities. This means families in these communities are often forced to use emergency rooms for routine needs, often saddling themselves with thousands of dollars of debt.
Bluebird Kids Health, a startup designed to tackle this problem, announced the close of a $31.5 million Series A funding round on Tuesday. The round, which represents Bluebird’s total funding to date, had participation from F-Prime, .406 Ventures, AIF and Juxtapose.
The company, founded last year, seeks to improve pediatric care access in underserved areas by building practices in these areas and accepting all insurance types.
The downstream effects of pediatric care deserts are troubling, pointed out Chris Johnson, Bluebird’s founder and CEO.
“Children on Medicaid often have emergency department and hospitalization rates that resemble Medicare patients — which is shocking when you consider these are generally healthy kids. This isn’t just a healthcare issue; it affects education when children miss school, economic mobility when families can’t work due to a child’s health needs, and overall community wellbeing,” Johnson explained.
At its clinics, Bluebird is creating a more seamless experience for families — one that makes it easier to access a child’s routine healthcare visits.
For instance, Bluebird’s website has easy pathways for scheduling, provider messaging and accessing after-hours support, Johnson noted. In order to reduce barriers to care, family members should be given easy access to their child’s care team, he said.
Bluebird is also building tools that ease the administrative burden on its clinical teams, Johnson added.
“Our population health analytics identify at-risk children early, allowing for proactive intervention. And we’re developing streamlined clinical workflows for both chronic and acute conditions that incorporate AI to reduce documentation time, enabling providers to focus more on patients,” he stated.
These tools help Bluebird operate effectively in value-based care models — where outcomes matter more than the sheer volume of appointments, Johnson remarked.
He said the startup’s business model is built around value-based care arrangements with both Medicaid and commercial payers.
“We’re paid to keep children healthy through proactive, high-quality primary care, which reduces unnecessary emergency department visits and hospitalizations. By addressing physical, behavioral, and social needs in an integrated manner, we can improve children’s health status while simultaneously lowering the total cost of care. When we succeed in this mission, we share in the savings created for the healthcare system,” Johnson declared.
Bluebird is headquartered in Boston, and its clinical operations are located in Florida.
The company currently operates three clinics in Palm Beach County, Florida that serve roughly 20,000 patients — and there are also new clinics under construction in Jacksonville, as well as plans for additional locations in Broward County, Johnson said. He added that the startup has plans for expansion into additional states “on the horizon.”
In Johnson’s eyes, Bluebird’s primary competition isn’t other pediatric providers. Instead, it’s the status quo of children simply not receiving care at all.
“In many communities we serve, the real alternative to Bluebird isn’t another practice; it’s families having nowhere to go except emergency departments for routine issues, or foregoing care entirely,” he stated.
In healthcare, leaders often focus on the market share between providers, but in pediatrics, the bigger issue is what economists might call “non-consumption” — children who should be receiving routine preventive care but aren’t connected to any healthcare delivery system, Johnson explained.
When these children lack a pediatrician, they often end up getting care from emergency departments — which aren’t designed for ongoing care, lack follow-up mechanisms and are highly expensive.
Because Bluebird delivers value-based care, it invests in care coordination, behavioral health integration, and addressing social determinants of health that traditional pediatric practices often can’t afford to prioritize, Johnson noted.
“By establishing practices in underserved areas and accepting all types of insurance, we’re creating access points where they previously didn’t exist. Our success isn’t measured by taking patients from other practices—it’s measured by reaching children who weren’t getting appropriate care before and demonstrating that serving these communities can be both impactful and sustainable,” he declared.
Photo: Suriyapong Thongsawang, Getty Images
