Social Determinants Work Groups

The Community Action Team for Social Determinants has broken into smaller workgroups around the goal areas below. Currently, we are using the Results Based Accountability (RBA) method of Turn-the-Curve thinking, to identify strategies and performance measures that address the root problems causing some of our communities' most widespread health issues. These open meetings are paired with targeted outreach by BHT ACH Staff to key movers-and-shakers of social programs and public forums requesting feedback. Once developed, all strategies will be made available on this site for public review. Please consider joining us at one of our upcoming meetings:

Transportation: Increase access to transportation through innovative partnerships
Next Meeting: Tuesday, August 16th - 9am – 10:30am

Community Support: Increase community access to socially supportive peer-groups.
Next Meeting: TBD, please check back

Food: Increase access to healthy, affordable food
Next Meeting: Wednesday, August 17th – 10am – 11:30am

Education: Improve education attainment
Next Meeting: Thursday, August 18th – 10am – 11:30am

Housing: Increase access and placement to stable and safe housing
Next Meeting: Tuesday, August 23rd 1pm-2:30pm

Income Stability: Increase opportunities to stabilize income
Next Meeting: Wednesday, August, 24th -10am-11:30am OR 2pm-3:30pm

All are invited to join these meetings, hosted at the Philanthropy Center (1020 W Riverside, Spokane WA 99201). We welcome anyone to join us at any step in the process, but please do email justin@betterhealthtogether.org to let us know you'll be joining. We discuss current and needed work in our region, and develop strategy to radically improve community health. 

Question: Does basic Medicare cover regular dental visits?

Question:

Does basic Medicare cover regular dental visits?
A)    Yes
B)    No
C)    I’m not sure…

If you answered A or C, you aren’t alone, as a recent Washington Dental Service Foundation survey showed 51% of respondents in Spokane believe Medicare covers dental. However, you would be wrong.

Correct answer: B) No, basic Medicare does not cover dental, and a lot of folks entering retirement are learning that the hard way. A recent article in The Spokesman Review talks about what steps folks approaching retirement should take for their oral health.

Good oral health relates to a lot more than just our teeth; our ability to chew effects the nutrition we receive, our ability to smile effects our confidence, and chronic conditions like Type 2 Diabetes can exacerbate dental decay.

Organizations like Smile Spokane, WDSF’s The Mighty Mouth, and our own DENT program are helping connect folks to the dental care they need, but for lasting change, we need a health care system that includes our mouths as part of our overall health. That's why the BHT ACH has set full integration of Oral, Physical, and Behavioral health systems as one of our region's main priorities. 

Read the Spokesman article to learn more:
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2016/aug/08/financial-decay-dental-care-can-threaten-retiremen/

More on the Pathways HUB

On Tuesday July 19th, we hosted a second presentation on the Pathways HUB, this one from Dr. Sarah Redding. This webinar more specifically looked at the process of building a HUB and achieving certification, as well as some examples of specific Pathways and how to build or bundle one's own Pathways. Once again this was a lively discussion with ample question and answer time from Dr. Redding, and we are so grateful she took the time to share with us. You may watch the webinar or download the slides here in case you missed it. 

Integrated Care Community Strategy Team meetings delayed

We have decided to hold off on starting out Integrated Care work group until September. Our Social Determinants and Population Health work groups are identifying strategies that address health upstream, and our ACH Project Team is exploring the Pathways HUB model to see if it fits for our regional project. We feel the decisions made by these groups will be crucial in shaping our Integration strategies, so we've decided to delay. If you want to be involved in the Integrated Care work group once if forms, shoot us an email. 

Free Community Health Worker Training in Chewelah

The Spokane Regional Health District in partnership with the WA Department of Health is pleased to announce that registration is open for the July 13, 2016 Community Health Worker (CHW) Training at the NEW Health Conference Center in Chewelah, WA 

This FREE training lasts eight weeks and is delivered through a blend of in-person and online components. The two in-person training dates are July 13, 2016 from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00p.m. and August 30, 2016 from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Registration begins at 8:45 a.m. both in-person training days.

 Participants will gain valuable skills to connect community members with health and social services. They also gain access to additional specialized trainings, access to a regional network and CHW exclusive local website.

 To register please go to: http://www.doh.wa.gov/CHWTS.

Presentation from the Pathways HUB

We would like to extend a huge thank you to Bob Harnach and MIke Bonetto for presenting on the Pathways HUB to our Regional Project Team. Their presentation gave us a lot to explore, and we look forward to continuing conversations within the community action team around the viability of this model for our region. 

If you would like to know more about the Pathways HUB, Mike & Bob were gracious enough to share their slides and a recording of the presentation. 

Condolences for the Passing of James Boyd

We are saddened by news this morning of the passing of James L. Boyd, Tribal Chairman of the Colville Tribes. As well as a dedicated and fondly remembered leader among the Colville Indian Reservation, Boyd was a talented songwriter who won numerous awards for his music. He will be missed by many, and our hearts go out to his family and tribe in this time of mourning. 

You may view the press release from the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation here. 

Pathway to our Regional Health Improvement Project

We’ve been eagerly awaiting news on the Medicaid Transformation Waiver but, since we aren’t ones to just sit around, we’re moving full speed ahead.

We’ve spent months synthesizing the wealth of information generated in our Idealized Design and Community Linkage mapping sessions to develop and inform our Regional Health Improvement Plan and the selection of a Regional Health Improvement Project. During our focus group conversations, our community worked together to inventory existing linkages between community resources, and identify where linkages were broken or non-existent. Across those conversations, one need presented itself over and over again: the need to “coordinate the coordinators.”

The diversity of partners in our ACH Leadership Council members demonstrates the leadership and dedication needed to radically improving the health of our region. We agree the most emergent need is not to scale any one community resource or service but to build stronger and more navigable connections between the coordinators and resources already available.

This was realized in our design sessions as a need for “air traffic control” or a patient-centered workforce that helps coordinate services across all sectors. Independent organizations need the flexibility to explore their own models and develop their strengths, but to nurture healthy community, patients need services that communicate, collaborate, and speak the same language of care.

From this idea, we’ve pulled together a workgroup to explore the Pathways HUB model and serve as the steering committee for our Regional Health Improvement Project. Alisha Fehrenbacher from Empire Health Foundation, presented on to the ACH Leadership Council in March on her experiences implementing the Pathways HUB model (view her slides here) in Oregon. It is an evidence-based model currently deployed in over 20 regions of the US, that positions care organizations around a centralized HUB, and has been shown to effectively address risk factors, improve health and reduce costs.

We feel confident this model has a lot to offer our region and are excited to explore it further. The workgroup will continue to develop our plan throughout the summer, with the hope that we will be in position to hit the ground running once we hear about the waiver. If you are interested in joining the Leadership Council, please email Alison@betterhealthtogether. 

May ACH Leadership Council Update

Thank you to all who joined us to talk next steps for our ACH. And a special thank you to the Health Care Authority for driving all the way across the state to help bring some additional clarity on our role as an ACH.

This was a big meeting that produced some concrete action items for Leadership Council members. In case you missed it, here is the recap and documents:

We started the morning with a presentation from Kali Morris from the Health Care Authority on the role of the ACH in Medicaid Transformation. You can view those slides here. In her presentation, Kali made some comparisons to Medicaid transformation work happening in New York, and shared some lessons learned from their efforts. If you are interested in learning more, you can read this report on New York's DSRIP Program put together by The Commonwealth Fund. On the topic of Value Based Payments, HCA also shared this helpful visual on Alternative Payment Models.  

After that we looked at our refined Community Strategy maps. Consider these our first draft as we synthesize the wealth of information that came out of our Idealized Design Sessions. The next step will be to form workgroups, each chaired by a BHT Board Member, to validate strategies, develop metrics, and finalize our community linkage maps. We will be forming a workgroup for each strategy map, reflecting our three ideal states of design. For more information, please review the following charters:

1. Integrated Care
2. Population Health
3. Community Determinants of Health

Additionally, we've made some headway on selecting our regional health improvement project around the development of a centralized community referral system ("air traffic control") based on the Pathways Community HUB model. We will be forming one additional workgroup to explore this model and serve as the steering committee to launch our project. You can take a look at the ACH Project Team Charter here. 

We are looking for volunteers to join one (or many!) workgroups, with the intent of meeting through the summer, to have Strategy Maps finalized by September 20th. If you are interested in joining one of these workgroups, please read through the above charters and consider which group best fits your expertise, and email your interest to Alison@betterhealthtogether.  

We also shared with everyone Empire Health Foundation's new Oral Health Access document. Please take a look and feel free to share!

That was a big update! But we are thrilled to have some actionable to-dos as a group. Thank you all for your willingness to jump aboard. 

Hello Rubber, Meet The Road!

Hello road, meet rubber!

Over the past 18 months, we have worked hard as a region to prepare for health transformation. We’ve established the right partners at the ACH table, selected priorities, imagined our ideal state of health, and now it feels like the forces of opportunity and hard work are aligning to create the ideal environment for big impact.

In some ways it feels like a long road, in other ways, just a start. Either way, the BHT team and I are more energized and enthusiastic than ever before. We see the potential of this work to unleash radical improvement the health of our region.

It’s clear we’ve been talking about the right things: Payment Reform, Investment upstream and in community determinants of health, regional decision making and the need to make stronger community linkages. And now we are ready to take this ACH for a test ride. In the coming 90 days we’ll be selecting our regional project, hearing a (hopefully positive) announcement about the Medicaid Waiver and launching further education on the state’s effort to accelerate the change from fee for service to value based purchasing. These big initiatives are about to move from talk to action. I’m proud of our region for embracing this, even when many of us weren’t sure if there was any there-there, but now we’re ready. It’s going to be a wild ride. I’m glad to be here with this amazing group of partners.

PS- Our blog is chocked full of great resources on Payment Reform, Access to Care and Prevention news. Don’t forget to check it out.