Category: Events

The Partnership to Align Social Care hosted a webinar, What Does the CY 2025 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Proposed Rule Mean for Addressing HRSNs? on Tuesday, July 30.

Attendees heard an overview and discussion of these updates and learned about relevant CMS requests for information, and additional opportunities to inform the public comment process. CBOs and community care hubs, health plans, health systems, Federally Qualified and Rural Health Centers (FQHCs and RHCs), other healthcare providers, and caregiver advocate attendees learned about how the proposed coding and payment changes could impact efforts to align health and social care ecosystems.

This session focused on the intersection of data security, compliance, and quality improvement from a Community Care Hub perspective. Abigail Morgan, President & CEO of Direction Home Akron Canton Area Agency on Aging & Disabilities, discussed the milestones in her organization's journey to develop their data security infrastructure and shared lessons learned. Participants broke out into groups for facilitated discussions to learn from their peers about data security experiences and opportunities.

Link to recording

Meeting Slides (PDF)

Meeting Summary and Notes (PDF)

The session focused on data sharing experiences from health plan, CBO, and CCH partnerships. Jolene Tanner, Senior Director of Health and Social Programs at United Healthcare, and Amy Fynmore, Housing and Health Program Manager at United Health Group, provided an overview of various data sharing arrangements including through community investment and direct vendor relationships. Attendees also had the opportunity to break into moderated group discussions with their peers.

Link to Recording

Meeting Slides (PDF)

Meeting Summary and Notes (PDF)

This session focused on what to expect from negotiations with a health plan when developing a contracted partnership. Nikki Kmicinski, Executive Director at Western New York Integrated Care Collaborative, Inc., shared her experiences in negotiating with healthcare organizations and discussed strategies to achieve a mutually beneficial contract for both parties. Attendees also had the opportunity to break into moderated group discussions with their peers.

Link to Recording

Meeting slides (PDF)

Meeting Summary and Notes

The Partnership to Align Social Care hosted a lunch and learn event on April 3, which was the first in a series of upcoming resources, A Primer: Understanding the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Billing Codes for Community Health Integration (CHI), Principal Illness Navigation (PIN), and Principal Illness Navigation - Peer Support (PIN-PS) Services.

This webinar aimed to build upon previous Partnership events detailing opportunities to address HRSNs through fee-for-service Medicare. Attendees will have an opportunity to ask questions to help inform planning for, and implementation of, CHI and PIN services.

This month’s Gravity Implementation Affinity Group featured Timothy McNeill, RN, MPH from the Partnership to discuss the new calendar year 2024 social needs HCPCS codes. Implementers learned how Gravity SNOMED-CT intervention codes align with and support additional documentation aligned with regulatory and policy drivers.

Thank you to Civitas Networks for Health for your support of the Gravity Implementation Affinity Group meetings.

Join the Partnership to Align Social Care and Camden Coalition for a monthly peer learning series that provides an opportunity for presenters and participants to go deeper into specific topics related to contracting between CBOs/CCHs and healthcare organizations.

Sessions will allow participants to:

• Participate in peer-to-peer learning about contracting between CBOs, CCHs, and healthcare organizations;
• Learn about and engage with stakeholders and leaders of the Partnership to Align Social Care;
• Find opportunities to support new CCHs and get involved in ongoing national initiatives;
  Generate new learning which can be packaged into future resources and leading practices.

Register for the series and learn more at www.partnership2asc.org/coffee-and-contracts!

The recording and materials are available for the February 27, 2024 Partnership to Align Social Care event, Meeting the Administration’s Call-to-Action: Leading Practices to Address Health-Related Social Needs in Communities Across the Nation, featuring a discussion with officials from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and key community and health care leaders on opportunities to address health-related social needs (HRSNs) through community partnerships.

The Partnership to Align Social Care is a cross-sector effort to co-design a multi-faceted strategy to enable successful partnerships between healthcare organizations and networks of CBOs, or Community Care Hubs (CCHs). 

But, what is a Community Care Hub? Why is this model part of an important evolution toward achieving an equitable health and social care ecosystem? The Partnership and health and social care sector leaders recently hosted a series of webinars that dive into these and other important topics. All recordings and presentations are available from those events, and we encourage you to catch up and share this information with interested colleagues!

• Webinar 1: Cultivating Community Care Hubs: An Evolving Model to Improve Alignment between Health and Social Care Services outlines the important role of a CCH and provides examples from the field. (Recording and slides)

• Webinar 2: Integrating Community Care Hubs into Efforts to Address SDOH: A Playbook for State Medicaid Agencies, details the recent collaboration between Manatt Health and the Partnership to Align Social Care to create a resource for state Medicaid agencies and others seeking to partner with Community Care Hubs (CCHs) to integrate community-based organizations (CBOs) more effectively into their social drivers of health (SDOH) initiatives. The full playbook is available to download at https://www.partnership2asc.org/medicaidplaybook2022/ along with the webinar recording and slides.

• Webinar 3: Leveraging Multi-Payer Partnerships with Community Care Hubs to Build Equitable Health and Social Care Ecosystems, highlights opportunities to blend and braid multiple funding sources to support Community Care Hub capacity and service delivery and make the business case for the CCH model. (Recording and slides)

A new one-of-a-kind resource—prepared by Manatt Health in collaboration with the Partnership to Align Social Care, and with support from The SCAN Foundation—intends to help state Medicaid agencies seeking to partner with CBO networks and Community Care Hubs in the design and implementation of SDOH initiatives.

Working with Community Care Hubs to Address Social Drivers of Health: A Playbook for State Medicaid Agencies aims to help state Medicaid leaders and other stakeholders:

• Identify opportunities for state Medicaid agencies to partner with networks of community-based organizations (CBOs) and Community Care Hubs (CCHs) to address SDOH;
• Introduce state Medicaid leaders to the key functions of CCHs, and provide practical advice on how state Medicaid agencies can collaborate with CCHs;
• Highlight strategies to overcome existing challenges around establishing and building sustainable relationships between CBOs and health care organizations; and
• Feature practical examples, tips and links to materials used to support SDOH and CCH efforts in communities across the country.

View the full Playbook

Read the Executive Summary

Watch the Playbook webinar and download slides