CHOP Forms 50-50 Autism Therapy Venture With Soar

Inside the 50-50 Joint Venture

PHILADELPHIA – Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has started a 50-50 joint venture with a for-profit, venture-backed autism therapy provider and is sharing its name with the new centers. CHOP and Denver-based Soar Autism Center opened the first CHOP-Soar Autism Center in Newtown, Pennsylvania, on January 5. Soar’s CEO says the network could eventually include 30 or more locations in the region.

This setup is different from a simple licensing or referral deal. CHOP and Soar created a 50-50 joint venture, with CHOP covering its part of the startup costs for each site, according to Steve Docimo, CHOP’s executive vice president for business development and strategy, who spoke to The Philadelphia Inquirer. The two organizations spent three years negotiating before reaching an agreement. CHOP, a nonprofit and one of the country’s largest children’s health systems, had previously avoided starting its own therapy program.

“The threshold to doing this on our own has always been high enough that we haven’t jumped in,” Docimo said. CHOP has diagnosed autism for years but has not delivered the ongoing therapy that follows.

CHOP described the partnership as the first of its kind. The hospital gets a branded, coordinated therapy network without taking on the cost and clinical risk of running it directly. Soar, which already operates more than 25 centers in Colorado and Arizona, gains a steady stream of referrals and the reputation of a top-ranked children’s hospital.

A Play-Based Model for Young Children

The centers serve children up to age 6 using the Early Start Denver Model. This approach combines applied behavior analysis with developmental and play-based methods rather than the repetitive drills often used in traditional ABA. According to Soar co-founder and CEO Dr. Ian Goldstein, children receive 15 to 30 hours of therapy each week for one to two years before moving on to the school system, as he told WHYY.

“This is meant to be an acceleration program to help children build skills at that time of life when their brain has its greatest neuroplasticity and capacity for change,” Goldstein said.

The Newtown clinic is a standalone 10,000-square-foot building with 35 to 40 rooms and an indoor playground. It can serve 40 to 50 children at full capacity. Each center provides speech, occupational, and behavioral therapy in one place. For ABA therapy, each child works individually with a registered behavior technician (RBT) who is supervised by a BCBA. Soar says its BCBAs have small caseloads of 7 to 8 clients.

“Our new partnership with Soar is grounded in collaboration, allowing us to extend the reach of CHOP’s network in a new and innovative way.” – Nathan J. Blum, MD, Chief of the Division of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (2026)

Commercial Plans Now, Medicaid Pending

The referral flow is where the partnership pays off. CHOP diagnoses children but has not offered the therapy that follows, so families face waits of six months to a year to begin treatment elsewhere. Now the hospital can route them into a center carrying its own name, shortening the handoff from diagnosis to intervention.

Dr. Amanda Bennett, CHOP’s director of autism services, said the arrangement lets the hospital “direct a child to intervention in their community knowing that they won’t have that 6-, 9-, sometimes even 12-month wait.”

For now, insurance coverage is limited. CHOP-Soar works with most commercial insurance plans in Pennsylvania and continues to join Medicaid networks, according to Soar’s website, which was updated in May. Families with Medicaid cannot enroll until those contracts are finalized.

A New Template for Competitors

The new venture enters a region where ABA providers already compete strongly. ABA Centers, Helping Hands Family, and NeurAbilities Healthcare have all grown around Philadelphia, according to the Inquirer. National use of ABA therapy increased by about 270% from 2019 to 2024, according to Trilliant Health data cited in the paper. Since 2021, Soar has raised about $55 million in funding, including a $17 million round late last year, with investors such as Cutting Horse, Brighton Health Partners, Divergent, and Standish, according to PitchBook.

What none of those competitors has is a co-branded tie to a children’s hospital of CHOP’s standing. Matthew Lerner, an autism researcher at Drexel University who is not involved in the venture, told the Inquirer that Soar’s evidence-based, multidisciplinary approach has much to offer the region. He added that “a person diagnosed with autism will have complex care needs throughout their life, and a one-size-fits-all, one-intervention approach will not work.” For a hospital-backed operator, the same brand that reassures families also reshapes where pediatricians send referrals and how much negotiating power the network holds with payers, making the commercial advantage clear.

“There will be a need to do more than five, and I think we’re jointly motivated to do so.” – Ian Goldstein, MD, Co-Founder and CEO, Soar Autism Center (2026)

Staffing is another area of competition. Soar is hiring in seven Pennsylvania towns, including King of Prussia, Blue Bell, Trevose, Yardley, and Horsham, for positions ranging from behavior technicians to center operations directors. Having a hospital name on the paycheck helps attract staff in a field where BCBA turnover is a constant challenge.

The partners plan five centers in the venture’s first two years and have not said where the next locations will open. Goldstein has said the region could support 30 or more sites. The venture is still working to join Medicaid networks, the step that will decide how far the CHOP brand reaches beyond commercially insured families and how fully the rollout can scale.

AT A GLANCE

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