Community Convener Services
NinePatch® Community Convener Services bring stakeholders and representatives from local health and social organizations together to speak a shared language and achieve common goals.
Health-related social needs and social determinants of health are similar ideas. However, each business sector defines concepts, use cases, and objectives differently. Likewise, different measurements exist to substantiate outcomes.
Improve Access to Services
Patients and consumers benefit from broad access to health care and social services without having to repeat information over and over again. Being part of different health systems or insurance plans or living in another city can mean that healthcare information systems do not share patient data.
NinePatch® software solutions help health and social organizations close data gaps. Community Convener Services support the implementation of NinePatch® Whole Person Care and RIE™ in local communities and across states.
Providers, approved through patient consent, can share information in various situations—after hospital discharge, at a doctor’s appointment, or while an individual is meeting with community center staff.
NinePatch® Whole Person Care allows individuals to consent and self-direct the care and services they receive. This style of person centered-planning empowers individuals to work with clinicians and social care providers. A care plan makes it easy for all involved to understand the steps to coordinate care, share information, and receive support.
Conveners follow a similar pattern of encouraging community care partners to create plans and implement program initiatives. Let’s look at three ways NinePatch Community Convener Services helps community care partners implement successful social determinants of health programs.
On The Ground Support
When clinical and social organizations meet, individuals can feel like both sides speak different languages. This communication gap is similar to how patients feel when physicians use healthcare acronyms or terminology they don’t understand.
Community convener services seek to understand and translate the structure and capabilities of organizations. Conveners help representatives from organizations who provide diverse services to build upon common goals.
Cross-community collaboration allows lead organizations to do what they do best, while convener services provide on-the-ground support. In addition, the Convener staff offers education about the benefits of participation to gain commitment from potential Whole Person Care or RIE users.
Onboarding meetings and training ensure the adoption and use of NinePatch software programs. Networking opportunities build trust across providers to remove hesitancy around referring to in and out-of-network services.
In addition to creating a vision and developing implementation timelines, convener efforts look toward the future to identify data measures that may include engagement, reimbursement sharing, cost reductions, efficiencies, and improved care.
Quality Measures vs. Social Measures
Measures for healthcare organizations reporting to CMS include effective, safe, efficient, person-centered, equitable, and timely care. Some providers feel healthcare organizations spend more time analyzing data than providing patient care.
Community-based and social organizations focus on helping people or causes and commit efforts to seeking grants, gifts, and donations. Unfortunately, funding cuts and the end of grant awards can result in program wait lists and discontinued programs.
So how can health and social organizations combine efforts to reduce healthcare costs and improve patient outcomes? One answer is reimbursement sharing.
According to CMS, “Z codes are a set of ICD-10-CM codes used to report social, economic, and environmental determinants known to affect health-related outcomes.”
For example social care providers who complete SDOH assessments can correlate social needs with Z-codes. Z code data can be transmitted and connected to ICD 10 CM and treatment codes used by clinical organizations who analyze the data.
Efforts are currently underway in many states to develop consistently used assessments and link these to ICD-10 z-codes, Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC), Systemized Nomenclature of Medicine – Clinical Terms (SNOWMED) Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) and other data sets.
Analyzing this data can lead to documentable outcomes and reimbursement sharing, that can establish financially sustainable relationships between clinical and community organizations.
NinePatch Community Convener Services include strategy development around data analytics that links clinical outcomes with measures of social determinants of health measures. When healthcare organizations have the tools to receive and analyze data from social organizations, the success of SDOH efforts supports use cases for patient interactions.
Financial Sustainability
The contrast between the mission of for-profit and non-profit organizations is vastly different. For-profit organizations raise money from investors and deliver returns to owners or shareholders. Non-profit organizations serve members, and social causes or provide public benefits.
This diversity of focus on profit generation contrasts efforts for organizations that do good today versus delivering concrete and sustainable results. Business concerns exist for many organizations, including financial sustainability, technological advancement, and consistent leadership.
All the while, persons engaged in these industries come to work daily to help people. So how can organizations help more people and meet corporate and financial goals?
Community convener services work with organizations in the areas of:
- Community governance building
- Plans for ongoing funding and financial sustainability
- Support with federal funding assistance, grant management, and investigating cross-sector reimbursements
NinePatch software solutions deliver value for organizations and make a difference in the everyday lives of individuals. Community Convener Services bring diverse organizations together to create a path for success and sustainability.
To Learn More About How Community Convener Services Supports NinePatch Whole Person Care and RIE™, Request a Demo Today