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Healthcare entities and social services providers are increasingly recognizing the importance of partnerships among historically siloed sectors to address health-related social needs (HRSNs). While the number of community-based organizations (CBOs) and community care hubs (CCHs) pursuing contracting relationships with healthcare organizations is increasing, CBOs and CCHs can experience challenges entering into contracting arrangements with the healthcare sector.

Join the Partnership to Align Social Care, the Aging and Disability Business Institute, and Camden Coalition for a webinar series offering a deep dive into leading contracting practices to effectively and efficiently address HRSNs. In each webinar, we will focus on the essential elements of contracting between health care and community partners and feature leading practices from the field. Each event will also highlight key findings from a four-part toolkit, Healthcare Guide to Contracting with CBOs, developed with extensive input from CBOs, health plans, and health systems. While these resources were developed for a healthcare audience, CBOs, CCHs, and other health and social care ecosystem stakeholders will benefit from understanding how healthcare organizations approach the contracting process.

Attendees will gain:

• Guidance on designing a payment structure/model that aligns contracting parties around shared goals and produces value for each party (Oct. 10 @ 2 ET);
• Recommendations on how to develop an effective Scope of Work, based on insights from healthcare organizations and CBOs with extensive cross-sector contracting experience (Nov. 14 @ Noon ET);
• Insight on how payers can improve collaboration with CBOs and strategies to anticipate, avoid, and respond to common challenges that arise when CBOs, CCHs, and payers set out to work together (Dec. 12 @ Noon ET); and
• Perspective from CBO and healthcare leaders highlighting leading practices from community and health care partners that have effectively contracted to address HRSNs for multiple populations.

Registrants will receive access to all three webinars. All registrants will receive the recordings and follow-up resources. Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_GInAyGusSbSsqe0985JjAA

A recently released Health Affairs article, Improving Health And Well-Being Through Community Care Hubs, authored by a cohort of federal agency employees, details the importance of developing, supporting, and investing in multistakeholder collaborations to address social drivers of health. In particular, the authors point to the Partnership to Align Social Care, a national learning and action network, and its role to convene leaders across CBOs, health plans and systems, national associations, philanthropy, and federal agencies to co-design a multifaceted strategy to enable successful partnerships among health care organizations and hubs. Read the blog and more resources about Community Care Hubs at www.partnership2asc.org/cch-resources.

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

During the conversation, Partnership Co-Chairs and healthcare thought leaders discussing integrating social care into healthcare delivery and the need for the organized delivery of social care services along with care coordination through a multi-stakeholder health and social care ecosystem, as part of a whole-person approach to health.

The full video recording is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LInsgUc8wxM&t=21s

Featured Panelists and Partnership to Align Social Care Members:

• Sherry Novick, Community Health Lead, Social Health Practice, Kaiser Permanente
• Ji Im, Senior Director for Community and Population Health, CommonSpirit Health
• June Simmons, CEO and President, Partners in Care Foundation
• Tim McNeill, COO, Freedmen’s Health

CommonSpirit has also provided the partnership with a $100,000 grant, according to a July 25 press release. The partnership will use these funds and other resources to connect health organizations with social care delivery, including childcare, jobs and housing resources as a way to improve population health and health equity. 

"As one of the nation's largest providers of Medicaid services, CommonSpirit works with community-based organizations in more than 21 states because we believe it's critical to the health of the communities we serve," said Ji Im, senior director for community and population health for CommonSpirit. "Through our participation in the Partnership, we are bringing decades of best practices to help create a blueprint for the integration of health care and social services."

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“As one of the nation’s largest providers of Medicaid services, CommonSpirit works with community-based organizations in more than 21 states because we believe it’s critical to the health of the communities we serve,” said

Ji Im, MPH, senior director for community and population health for CommonSpirit and leader of one of the Partnership to Align Social Care’s work groups.     “Through our participation in the Partnership, we are bringing decades of best practices to help create a blueprint for the integration of health care and social services.”

Research shows that aligning health care with organizations that connect people to community resources–childcare, jobs, housing, nutrition, and transportation–measurably improves the overall health of the population and can impact

up to 80 percent of health outcomes.^[1] The Partnership to Align Social Care was established to help create efficient networks that share information, are owned by the community, and supported by all the agencies, institutions, and businesses that are involved in improving health.

“CommonSpirit has been foundational to forming our Partnership and helping define its mission,” said June Simmons, MSW, Partnership to Align Social Careco-chair and Partners in Care Foundation CEO. “As a leader of one of our key workgroups, CommonSpirit is helping to convene diverse stakeholder groups to co-design a model that can be implemented across the country to create healthier communities.”

Founding organizations include health plans such as Aetna CVS Health, Elevance Health, Humana and United Healthcare; integrated delivery networks such as Kaiser Permanente; health systems including CommonSpirit and Rush University Medical Center; community-based organization (CBO) networks including the Detroit Agency on Aging, Partners in Care Foundation, and the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers. Liaisons from several federal agencies including the Administration for Community Living (ACL), the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) advise this effort.

Through the Partnership, organizations that may not typically work together have established a forum to create a framework that will build and sustain the capacity of CBO networks to provide social services. The Partnership will focus on priority issues including:

• Co-designing common standards for effective and sustainable partnerships of CBO networks, health plans, and health systems
• Identifying core attributes and competencies for CBO network credentialing
• Identifying/encouraging widespread use of existing billing codes and essential elements for a streamlined contracting process between health systems, health plans, and CBOs
• Making recommendations for infrastructure capabilities and financing for more sustainable CBO networks

CommonSpirit’s participation in the Partnership leverages its work in initiating and advancing models to close the gap between medical and non-medical providers and create a continuum of care so that patients receive the services they need to reach their greatest health potential. These include the Connected Community Network (CCN) model, which has been implemented in more than 20 different markets, to bring together diverse stakeholders to create an infrastructure for connecting underserved populations with the community resources they need. CCNs include shared governance and an innovative “community bank” concept, which creates a sustainable funding mechanism: funding partners contribute to the community bank and share in community infrastructure costs. Similarly, CommonSpirit has partnered with Pathways Community HUB Institute (PCHI) on a collaborative, outcome-based payment model for community health workers that complements the CCN and involves many of the same types of organizations and institutions.

About CommonSpirit Health
CommonSpirit Health is a nonprofit, Catholic health system dedicated to advancing health for all people. It was created in February 2019 by Catholic Health Initiatives and Dignity Health. With its national office in Chicago and a team of over 150,000 employees and 25,000 physicians and advanced practice clinicians, CommonSpirit operates 140 hospitals and more than 1,500 care sites across 21 states. In FY 2021, CommonSpirit had revenues of $33.3 billion and provided $5.1 billion in charity care, community benefit, and unreimbursed government programs. Learn more at www.commonspirit.org.

About Partnership to Align Social Care

The Partnership to Align Social Care—A National Learning and Action Network (Partnership), is a unique collective commitment to achieve meaningful alignment of health care and social care systems. The Partnership includes leaders among community-based organizations, health plans and systems, national associations and advocacy organizations, philanthropic organizations, foundation, academic institutions, federal agencies, and other key participants collaborating to co-design a strategy to enable successful partnerships between health care organizations and networks of community-based organizations (CBOs) delivering social care services delivering health-impacting social care. The Partnership aims to align with the CMS Innovation Center Strategy Refresh and aspires to support health and social care delivery system transformation that enables value-based care. Core components include shared governance, sustainable financing, multi-stakeholder accountability, and policy changes at the federal, state, and local levels. Learn more at www.partnership2asc.org.

^[1] https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/research/2019/02/medicaid-s-role-in-addressing-social-determinants-of-health.html

Members of the Partnership are collaborating to co-design a plan to build the full capacity of community based organizations (CBOs) to deliver health-impacting social care.The Partners in Care Foundation has received a one-year, $350,000 award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to support a multi-disciplinary group known as the Partnership to Align Social Care – A National Learning and Action Network (Partnership).

Members of the Partnership are collaborating to co-design a plan to build the full capacity of communitybased organizations (CBOs) to deliver health-impacting social care.

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