One record for the whole team around the child
Coordinated care costs less than crisis care. Children with autism and complex needs are supported by their school, their Children’s Disability Network Team, primary care, private therapists and their family, who rarely share a record. When warning signs don’t reach the people who can act on them, care escalates to the emergency department. FPK-X gives the whole team one record.
This page is for HSE disability and primary care services, Children’s Disability Network Teams and the lead agencies that run them. It sets out the published figures, what FPK-X shows today and what it does not yet show, and what a pilot would measure.
By the numbers
- 1–1.5%of children in Ireland estimated to be autistic, for planning policy and services (Department of Health, 2018)
- 45,141children on the caseloads of 93 Children’s Disability Network Teams (HSE, 2026)
- 8,648children waiting for a CDNT at the end of February 2026, 5,605 of them for more than 12 months (HSE, 2026)
- 6 monthsthe statutory limit to start and complete an Assessment of Need under the Disability Act 2005 (S.I. 263/2007)
Published figures, not FPK data. The national CDNT waiting list has fallen from 16,522 children in July 2023, and a 10-week pathway from referral to first intervention applies to new referrals from 1 June 2026 (HSE, 2026). Every child on a caseload or a waiting list is also known to a school and a family, each holding part of the picture.
What a crisis costs
| Event | Average cost |
|---|---|
| Emergency department attendance, care in the ED only (2019 data) (HSE, 2021) | €300 |
| Acute inpatient bed, per year (2022 data) (HSE, 2024) | €438,730 |
| Acute inpatient bed, per night (derived: annual cost ÷ 365) | about €1,200 |
National averages across all ages, hospitals and case types; no published Irish figure is specific to paediatric stays. Your service’s own costs will differ.
Evidence on coordination
Irish outcome evidence is still limited. An Irish nurse case-management service for children with complex healthcare needs was valued by families and staff, but its effect on hospital use was not measured (Brenner et al., 2021).
Internationally, a randomised trial of high-risk children with chronic illness found that comprehensive coordinated care in an enhanced medical home cut, per 100 child-years (Mosquera et al., 2014):
- −52%emergency department visits (90 vs 190)
- −49%hospitalisations (69 vs 131)
- −55%children with a serious illness (10 vs 22)
- −42%cost of care per child-year (cost ratio 0.58)
A US trial at one site with 201 children; the authors call for larger studies. It tested a clinical medical home, not FPK-X.
What FPK-X does today, and what it does not yet do
The status column says what our evidence shows today. Where something is not yet built, we say so.
- Shown in use with a real team
- Partly shown some of it in use
- To build not yet present
| Need | What our evidence shows | Status |
|---|---|---|
| One record across school, home and therapy | 12 people in 7 roles from school and therapy, plus the family, in one record with role-based access | Shown |
| A longitudinal view for a key worker or case co-ordinator | A timeline across every provider, with an automatically built year-in-review | Shown |
| Duplicate or missing services made visible | One de-duplicated timeline shows where provider notes and official service records disagree | Shown |
| Early warning signs | Incident reports capture triggers, what helped and follow-up; emergency department and admission tracking is not built yet | Partly shown |
| Evidence for referrals and Assessment of Need | School, home and therapy observations gathered in one place; no referral or Assessment of Need workflow yet | Partly shown |
| Working with existing records | Imports existing documents and spreadsheets and de-duplicates them; no integration with HSE systems yet | Partly shown |
| Language access | Multi-language support is on the roadmap | To build |
| Results in an Irish setting | Our first measured results come from a school team in the United States; we have not yet measured an Irish service | To build |
“Shown” refers to one school team’s use of FPK-X in the 2025–26 school year. See what we’ve measured so far for that result and its limits, and the sample reports the team received.
A proposed pilot
We would like to test this with a Children’s Disability Network Team or lead agency, and measure it properly:
- Agree a cohort of children with complex needs on a team’s caseload, with their families’ consent.
- Connect the family, the school (teachers and SNAs) and the team’s therapists in FPK-X.
- Measure time from referral to first intervention against the 10-week pathway, and the time spent gathering information for assessments and reviews.
- Track emergency department attendances and admissions for the cohort against an agreed comparison.
- Ask families how often they have to repeat the same information to different services.
Talk to us about a health-service pilot
Tell us about your service and the children you have in mind. Please don’t include a child’s name or health details in a first message.
Register your interestReferences
- Brenner, M., Doyle, A., Begley, T., Doyle, C., Hill, K., & Murphy, M. (2021). Enhancing care of children with complex healthcare needs: An improvement project in a community health organisation in Ireland. BMJ Open Quality, 10(1), e001025. doi:10.1136/bmjoq-2020-001025
- Department of Health (2018, 5 December). Minister Harris announces first-ever autism plan for 2019 [Press release]. gov.ie
- Health Service Executive (2021, 23 September). Response to parliamentary question 42370/21 (average cost of an emergency department attendance).
- Health Service Executive (2024, 26 July). Response to parliamentary question 30401/24 (annual cost of an acute inpatient bed).
- Health Service Executive (2026, 21 April). Response to parliamentary question 27013/26 (Children’s Disability Network Teams: caseloads, waiting list and Assessment of Need). about.hse.ie
- Mosquera, R. A., Avritscher, E. B., Samuels, C. L., et al. (2014). Effect of an enhanced medical home on serious illness and cost of care among high-risk children with chronic illness: A randomised clinical trial. JAMA, 312(24), 2640–2648. doi:10.1001/jama.2014.16419
- Disability Act 2005 (Assessment of Need) Regulations 2007 (S.I. No. 263 of 2007). irishstatutebook.ie
For the research on documentation burden and structured data in schools, see the research behind FPK.