Partner Spotlight: Waiver Finance Workgroup
/The Waiver Finance Workgroup is one of this ACH's longest-running councils and carries a critical workload in moving the Medicaid Transformation forwar
Read MoreThe Waiver Finance Workgroup is one of this ACH's longest-running councils and carries a critical workload in moving the Medicaid Transformation forwar
Read MoreThe Community Voices Council is off and running! This council's charge is to tap directly into the needs of the very citizens the Transformation is meant to serve.
Read MoreYou're invited to join Better Health Together for two presentations; one on Upstream and the other on Six Building Blocks Approach to Improving Care for Patients using Chronic Opioid Medications.
Read MoreThe Community-Based Care Coordination Advisory Council (also known as the Hub Council), met for the first time last Monday in its early stages.
Read MoreThe Provider Champions Council lends clinical leadership and expertise to the BHT Medicaid Transformation efforts
Read MoreA continously updated list of questions about everything Collaborative related.
Read MoreWhew! It's hard to believe it is nearly March and pitchers and catchers have already reported to Spring training. We have been busy these last two months.
Read MoreThe Navigator Network team gave their newest team member, Israel Vidales, the opportunity to attend the 2018 Families USA conference in Washington D.C. last month. Israel learned about the various ideas that states are planning with their Medicaid waivers. These ideas included Medicaid buy-in options and payment reform. He also attended a panel discussion on lowering prescription costs and how states were strategizing to implement bills pertaining to price gouging and drug pricing transparency. Israel had the pleasure of hearing inspiring speeches from Senators Cory Brooker, which can be found here, and Elizabeth Warren, which can be found here. Besides the exciting topics and speakers from the conference, Israel managed to visit all the national monuments around the D.C area. Out of all the monuments, he enjoyed the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials. Our Navigator team are making east coast connections and enjoying the sites in their spare time.
Washington State will use funds transferred from public providers, know as Intergovernmental Transfers (IGT), to make up a portion of the dollars for Medicaid Transformation.
Read MoreAs part of our FIMC investment in Behavioral Health providers in the region, BHT hosted a presentation and training session on Managed Care Contracting, presented by Adam Falcone. With a turnout with 23 agencies and 60 individuals participating, it was clear this was a topic of importance for our region! His presentation included preparing for Managed Care contracting, evaluating contracts, negotiation, and key terms and legal protections. Check out the agenda of the presentation here to take a look at the full span of everything that was covered.
Last Wednesday, BHT sat in on a call with the eight other ACHs and the HCA for our monthly Communications Council call, an opportunity for all parties to align on communication projects and language for Healthier Washington.
One discussion point during the call was around the use of the word “Demonstration” in our project work. This word was determined to be insensitive because of its association with experimental medical and surgical practices in the antebellum South. Going forward, it has been decided that ACH work will be referred to as the Medicaid Transformation. For more information, see the full guidance here.
A second point of discussion was the HCA’s VBP webinar series, which launched in January and will continue through March. This series is a great opportunity to get familiar with all things VBP, so we encourage everyone to participate if they are able to or listen to the recordings of the webinars when they find time. Find out more about the series here.
The Community Voices Council met officially for the first time this week in its very early stages. Co-chairs Phil Tyler and Marion Lee led a lively discussion on factors to consider as we work together building the rest of the council in a way that best represents the diverse needs and interests of the Medicaid community in the BHT region.
The nomination survey is still open—we would love to hear who you consider to be a strong community advocate with either lived experience as a Medicaid beneficiary or experience navigating the Medicaid system on behalf of others and who is willing to make their voice heard.
Throughout the ACH development process the BHT team has committed to keeping our partners informed on the many moving parts of this work. This often means we release information ONLY to find it to be “clarified” by new information or additional guidance provided via the Health Care Authority. As we noted on Friday, there are ongoing uncertainties surrounding ACH Funds Flow, specifically related to negotiations with the BHO and HCA, on behalf of our region, for our Integrated Managed Care efforts and the timing of earned Project funds for Year 1.
Both of these outstanding issues caused us pause. We know we have a lot of work to do to be ready for transformational efforts. We are also very clear that this is a heavy lift for our Providers and Partners, and we want to maximize the amount of time we give you to plan and make sure we aren’t getting ahead of ourselves. To this end, we are delaying both the release and request for signed Commitment Forms/MOUs from Providers and Partners until the week of February 19th. We are encouraged by several conversations that have occurred in the last couple of days that the outstanding issues will be resolved and we will have more clarity on the release of earned funds to our region.
Throughout our 101 sessions, we noted that Collaborative membership was due on February 22nd. It’s our intent to extend this deadline until late March providing ample time for Collaboratives to develop and partners to be clear on commitments.
As always, please continue to reach out to BHT staff if you have any questions. We look forward to sharing updates as soon as we can.
-Alison Carl White, BHT Executive Director
To support this vision of whole-person care, which connects health care and social determinants together, we landed on our Collaborative setting model to both organize the work and distribute funds.
Read MoreBHT is excited to be piloting the Pathways Hub model for Care Coordination in our region. Check out these informational videos to learn more.
Read MoreAs the backbone organization supporting the Collaboratives in health systems change, BHT believes part of that responsibility is ensuring that as many dollars go to our partners as possible. We can stay narrow because our role is of a coordinator; we believe our community has the experts it already needs to get the work done.
Read MoreAt our January 24th BHT Board meeting, the Board approved the first round of Funds Flow allocation for Year 1 Project Funds. Our intent is to push out as many dollars as we can now to support our partners in planning and preparation for transformation in their settings, while holding back a portion of funds to target investments based on our partner gap assessments.
The first set of Funds Allocations includes two streams of ACH Funding: Year 1 Project Funds: Collaborative, and the first payout of the FIMC Incentive dollars.
Year 1 Project Funding will be distributed to partners within our Community Health Transformation Collaboratives in three ways:
Please note that partners not in Primary Care or Behavioral Health settings (aka partners who do not bill Medicaid directly) will only have access to base funding pool.
FIMC Incentive Funding became available to the region when we voted to become a mid-adopter of Integrated Managed Care. The year one payment total will be $3,120,000. BHT is prioritizing our first round of funding to Contracted BHO Providers delivering mental health and substance use disorder services and Tribal Behavioral Health providers, to support a core set of transitional efforts required for financial managed care integration.
This is our first run of funds flow allocation. Once we have completed assessments with our partners and are more informed around Domain 1 areas where investment may be needed, the Waiver Finance workgroup will begin building recommendations for the next round of funds flow. See the materials below for more information.
Year 1 Project Fund Executive Summary
The Provider Champions Council met last Monday evening. Robbi Kay Norman from Uncommon Solutions began the meeting with a brief presentation on the role of the ACH moving forward. Where BHT has previously had a heavy hand in helping to build partnerships and build a framework for regional health improvement, it will now serve as a high-level governance structure to provide support, facilitation, data collection and analysis. Alison Carl White, BHT Executive Director, walked the council through some of the reasoning behind the funding allocations that have been decided up to this point in the funds flow model.
Brian Sandoval of Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic then gave an overview of the differences and similarities between the Bree Collaborative and Collaborative Care models for bi-directional integration of Primary Care and Behavioral Health, and led a discussion on which concepts of each model might promote best practices for providers in our region. While both models are evidence-based approaches for integrating behavioral health into the primary care setting, each model brings different strengths into the care system. The Collaborative Care Model is a team-based model that adds a behavioral health care manager and psychiatric consultant to support the primary care provider and can be practice-based or telehealth-based, an important concept for our region. The Bree Collaborative’s Behavioral Health Integration Report and Recommendations focuses on routine, same day access to a shared care plan at the point of care and places a heavy emphasis on psychiatric services, including for those patients who are not improving or require a higher level of care. Both models rely on screening and tracking to monitor patient progress.
The discussion around best practices for integration of behavioral health and primary care will be ongoing in this council, and Monday’s discussion was an important introduction of what will be a significant topic for future work of the Collaboratives.
Special guest and friend from Buffalo, NY, Ann Monroe shared lessons she and other PPSs have learned from being one year ahead of us in year 3 of DSRIP.
Read MoreAnn Monroe, a friend from Buffalo, New York, will be joining us to present on her experiences with the health transformation taking place in New York. Ann works in a PPS, the equivalent of ACHs in New York, and will be sharing some of what she as well as other PPSs have learned during their Transformation Project, which is currently in Year 3. She will be giving a short presentation and there will be a large period of time dedicated to Q&A after. This will be a great opportunity to ask questions to someone that is a little further ahead in their health systems transformation experience and we hope it can be utilized to its fullest. We look forward to seeing you at the Spokane Regional Health District for our first Leadership Council of 2018! If you plan to attend, register here.