Over the past couple of years, a lot of attention has been paid to the importance of community-based organizations developing the skills to negotiate and partner effectively with payers, health systems, and provider organizations:

• Earlier this year, the National Coalition on Care Coordination released a report “Building the Business
  Case: Community Organizations Responding to the Changing Healthcare Environment for Aging Populations,” which explains that in order to best meet the needs of older adults and other vulnerable populations, it is imperative that community-based organizations and the healthcare sector develop collaborations.
• The Administration for Community Living is now hosting the second cohort of its learning collaborative and technical assistance for business acumen (more details can be found here). Many resources for community-based organizations are available here, such as webinar slides about legal considerations to consider when partnering with a managed care organization, and a tip sheet “Assessing Health Plans’ NCQA HEDIS Performance”.
• The SCAN Foundation has hosted Linkage Lab, a similar learning collaborative for community-based organizations in California. Case studies of organizations and other lessons learned from the first Linkage Lab cohort can be found here, and several relevant educational modules are available at no cost here.

Innovative programming that is person centered and works to integrate medical and social services is an essential part of what community-based organizations can offer to payers and providers. It is imperative that community-based organizations are able to offer effective programming and create a value proposition of those programs, and launching a Bridge Model program is tool to support you in this. For more on Bridge replication, please email [email protected].