November 12, 2019
The i2i Center for Integrative Health recently completed work on projects that benefit individuals, providers, managers and regulators in determining the quality of care of two important services while moving North Carolina’s behavioral and healthcare services closer to the vision for integrated, value based care for those receiving Medicaid.
i2i Executive Director Mary Hooper stated, “Just over a year ago, i2i established itself as an organization with the ability to convene a broadly defined cross-section of stakeholders to strategize around solutions to shared concerns in order to activate change to improve care and move NC toward whole person healthcare. I am extremely pleased to say that our first two collaborative efforts have done just that.”
Over the past several months i2i has convened key stakeholders for two significant collaboratives with the support of the NC Department of Health and Human Services. Both collaborative activities are focused on the transformation of significant services – one for adults, Community Support Team, which serves high need behavioral health individuals so they can successfully live in the community and the other for children who have the highest need for intensive care through Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facilities (PRTF). The pilot programs and recommendations from the i2i collaboratives will result in making both of these important Tailored Plan services more consistent with the principles of value-based and integrated care.
The i2i Value-Based Care/Community Support Team Collaborative has been meeting for over a year, and the results of its activities will be the establishment of a pilot that will infuse outcomes metrics measuring success, consistency and reduced administrative burden for providers. The goal is to use the pilot to evaluate any continuing challenges and barriers to expanding the use of value-based contracts to services within both the Tailored and Standard Plans.
The PRTF Collaborative consisted of every LME/MCO and select providers who are already a part of a pilot project. The consensus-building facilitation of i2i led to a recommended dashboard of metrics that will show the successes and areas where improvements to services can be made across PRTFs. The Collaborative took it one step further and recommended the use of a standardized child assessment tool to allows for improvements in the child’s care during their treatment and better service supports once they return to the community.
i2i Executive Director Mary Hooper described the work of these Collaboratives saying, “Over this year, we’ve had the opportunity to test our ability to convene groups to address issues and topics impacting the public behavioral healthcare system. I’m pleased to say that we’ve made headway as evidenced by the pilot work we’ve established with these groups.”
About the i2i Center
The i2i Center for Integrative Health is a non-profit 501 ( c ) 3 organization whose mission it is to foster collaborative and evidence-based initiatives for improving the quality and efficacy of the behavioral health, intellectual and developmental disabilities, and substance use care and support service systems within a comprehensive system of whole person care.