BLOG: Community Health Workers Are Key in Building a Connected Community of Care

Community Health Workers Are Key in Building a Connected Community of Care

By Estefania Salazar Contreras, Advisory Service Ops Manager

Community health workers (CHWs) were found to be one of the critical elements that supported the Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation’s (PCCI) successful five-year implementation of the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Accountable Health Communities (AHC) Model in Dallas County1.

PCCI and its provider partners and community-based organizations (CBOs) supporting the Dallas AHC model (DAHC) offered innovative and highly effective new technologies and methods to help address health-related social needs (HRSNs), i.e., food housing, transportation, utilities, and interpersonal safety, of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries in Dallas County. But the element that served as the glue to the entire process was the human touch delivered by the CHWs who worked with the program participants every day through a process called “navigation.”

The navigation work itself was not unique to the DAHC. CMS required AHC awardees to conduct an initial screening to identify high-risk beneficiaries with HRSNs and then provide them with active navigation services consisting of referrals to aligned CBOs, accompanied by monthly follow-up calls for up to 12 months or until the documented HRSNs  were successfully addressed. CMS provided specific methods, goals, and even scripts for this work. But what

 we didn’t count on was the impact of our CHWs in delivering compassionate support to those who were not expecting it, but were incredibly grateful to receive it.

The Ideal Beneficiary Screening Setting

One key factor for a successful outreach program such as this is to have the “Ideal Screening Setting.” When we first began implementing the AHC program, we thought we could conduct the screening for HRSNs as part of outpatient clinical site encounters. However, our CHWs and team quickly realized that screening in an outpatient clinic’s waiting areas was not ideal for the beneficiaries. Patients were preoccupied waiting to be called to see their physician or financial department advisor. In addition, because we did not have a private space allocated for conducting the screening, they were concerned that other people could see and hear their conversations with the CHWs. As a result, this process yielded a low rate of completed screenings, making it nearly impossible to meet our CMS navigation targets. 

Therefore, we decided to change our approach by next screening inside of Emergency Departments (EDs). While this approach yielded slight increases in the number of completed screenings, these numbers were still not sufficient to meet the CMS targets. It is no secret that EDs are extremely busy. Moreover, CHWs wanted to be respectful of the clinical staff who had pressing priorities, and completing a screening was not at the top of their lists. It was also difficult to get participation from individuals who were understandably focused on their immediate health needs or in pain.

Using these lessons learned, we then decided to shift to a telephonic post-clinical-visit screening intervention. With this approach, our CHWs could screen beneficiaries within five days of their inpatient, ER, or outpatient encounter. PCCI’s data scientists helped make this engagement possible by generating beneficiary eligibility call lists for the CHWs to utilize daily. Beneficiaries were not preoccupied with clinical staff, in urgent pain, and could request a call back if they did not feel comfortable answering the screening questions at the time of the initial call. The CHWs also communicated in the language of the beneficiary’s preference.  Due to these factors, the telephonic post clinical visit screening became the “Ideal Screening Setting,” which allowed PCCI to not only meet―but ultimately surpass―the CMS navigation targets.

What Successful Outreach Looks Like

Once an eligible beneficiary completed the AHC HRSN screening and personal interview, through the navigation process, the CHW provided a list of referrals to one of the many CBOs best suited to meet the beneficiary’s needs (e.g.,  help with food, rent, or transportation). Referrals for each beneficiary were determined based on the CHW’s personal knowledge of available local resources. The outreach didn’t end with one screening and one referral. Following an initial two-week referral follow-up, our CHWs continued the case-management/navigation process by contacting the beneficiary monthly to determine if additional referrals were needed, as well as to assess the status of the beneficiary’s experience with the current resource list and referrals. If a beneficiary was unsuccessful with a specific CBO, the CHW provided additional guidance or a new referral. We found another benefit to this process as beneficiaries often reported new needs not identified during the initial screening stage.

The CHWs had to overcome a number of obstacles, primarily including the COVID-19 pandemic. Many CBOs limited or changed their hours of operations or even closed  for spans of time that sometimes were undisclosed. Our CHWs found themselves driving by CBOs to check on their availability while updating the program’s network on the CBOs’ status. This speaks to the dedication and passion our team had in making sure the program participants were well cared for and received the most up-to-date and accurate information.

Additionally, with the help of PCCI’S data scientists, they were able to create a daily automated case management report that identified what beneficiaries needed to be prioritized in the CHW’s caseload and weekly workflow. This allowed each CHW to maintain a caseload of about 200-250 beneficiaries at any one time. Because CHWs were very consistent with monthly beneficiary follow-ups,, beneficiaries could rely on them and began to trust them and disclosed more information on their existing (or new) HRSNs with more honesty and openness. Some of the most prevalent HRSNs outside of the five CMS core HRSN were affordable child-care, baby supplies (e.g.,  formula and diapers), and medical equipment. These additional needs were then incorporated into our CBO directory so we could align the needs with  potential community resources. We were able to conclude that on average it takes about 93 days or 4 telephone contacts to be able to resolve a need. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we did note that CHW phone calls with beneficiaries lengthened, especially for those who did not have any family or friends to count on or had to isolate because they were high risk for infection..  

Human Touch is still the Best Human Service

The quantitative results of the program speak to the overall success of each facet of the DAHC in very meaningful ways. For example, results showed that actively navigated individuals experienced a greater decrease in ED visits than those in a comparable control cohort, with those navigated having a statistically significant reduction in average ED utilization, both while actively navigated and in the 12 months after navigation. Those navigated also demonstrated a greater likelihood to seek — and keep — outpatient visits compared with the control cohort2.. These results offer our community greater cost savings and lead to a healthier community, especially for those who are considered the most at-risk.

But in addition to these results, we surveyed our participants on their own perspectives and experiences. Here are a few of the respondent’s comments from the survey:

  • “It helped me out in so many ways with my first baby. As moms we think everything will be easy, but there was so much I didn’t know about that helped me.”
  • “It made a big difference for me both emotionally and with my physical needs like food and bills. To know Parkland cares about us means so much!”
  • “It was nice to hear that there was help. I didn’t feel alone.”

One of the key highlights from these surveys was the value the participants placed on the connection with their CHWs, underscoring the importance of the human touch in improving the health and well-being of those most at-risk. For our team of CHWs who regularly went above and beyond for the beneficiaries they served, the positive data and cost savings are great, but their pride comes from knowing they helped to provide meaningful compassion, care, and support to people who needed it the most.

For a deep dive into PCCI’s efforts supporting the Dallas AHC, please review this article in the New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst: https://pccinnovation.org/new-england-journal-of-medicine-the-dallas-accountable-health-community-its-impact-on-health-related-social-needs-care-and-costs/

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[1] This project was supported by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award totaling $4.5M with 100 percent funded by CMS/HHS. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by CMS/HHS, or the U.S. Government.

[2] Naeem J, Salazar-Contreras E, Sundaram V, Wainwright L, Kosel K, Miff S. The Dallas Accountable Health Community: its impact on health-related social needs, care, and costs. NEJM Catalyst. 2022 Aug 17.

Media Coverage: Patient EngagementHit – Behind The Scenes of Accountable Health Communities, SDOH Screening Model

Behind The Scenes of Accountable Health Communities, SDOH Screening Model
By Patient EngagementHit
October 24, 2022 – Healthcare organizations nationwide are clamoring over social determinants of health (SDOH) screening and intervention strategies nowadays, but that wasn’t entirely the case even five years ago, according to Steve Miff, MD, the president and CEO of Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation…
https://patientengagementhit.com/features/behind-the-scenes-of-accountable-health-communities-sdoh-screening-model

 

Can a Connected Community of Care reduce use and healthcare costs? The Dallas Accountable Health Communities Has Given Us Some Answers

By Jacqueline Naeem, MD, Senior Medical Director/Program Director AHC

In a recent article posted in the globally recognized leader in healthcare publishing, the New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst (NEJM Catalyst), we detailed how PCCI led the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Accountable Health Communities (AHC) Model in Dallas County.1

To view the NEJM Catalyst article, click here: https://catalyst.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/CAT.22.0149

As the article details, this five-year initiative, which included partnerships with the region’s top healthcare providers (e.g., Parkland Health) and community-based organizations (CBOs), demonstrated its positive impact on health care outcomes for some of the most vulnerable Dallas County residents.

The aim of the initiative was to answer the question as to whether cost and utilization outcomes can be improved through addressing health related social needs (HRSNs) of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. CMS identified the core HRSNs (i.e., food, housing, utilities, transportation, and interpersonal safety) but beneficiaries also disclosed needs for additional items, such as medical equipment, diapers, and baby formula. We hoped that by identifying these needs and connecting beneficiaries to resources to assist with meeting the needs, we would see a reduction both in health costs and emergency department utilization.

We found the answer was Yes. But while our results seem straightforward, as we discuss below, for the DAHC (as with other connected community of care models) there were multiple, interconnected elements at play and the route to get there was at times heavily circuitous (but always rewarding). We will begin by sharing our output and results.

We (PCCI and partner community health workers) were able to provide over 9,000 beneficiaries with active case management (we refer to this as navigation) where they were screened for their HRSNs, and then referred to CBOs for assistance in resolving the identified needs. The community health workers (CHWs) also provided monthly follow-up calls with each beneficiary until their needs were met, or for up to 12 months. Over the initiative’s course, PCCI identified more than 19,000 distinct needs, with 61% of individuals having two or more concurrent needs. Through the referral process, CBOs provided a multitude of support services, including more than 200,000 pounds of food and $540,000 in utility rent assistance.

With that output, as outlined in greater detail in the NEJM Catalyst article, we were able to make some conclusions. Results showed that actively navigated individuals experienced a greater decrease in per-person ED visits than those in a comparable control cohort, with the navigation cohort having a statistically significant reduction in average ED utilization, both while actively navigated and in the 12 months after navigation. We also found that there is an ROI of $1.34 per dollar spent, which demonstrates the positive impacts on cost as well.

To better understand how we achieved these results, it is important to examine how we built the DAHC.

 PCCI’s Role

As we discuss in the NEJM Catalyst article, PCCI served as a bridge organization to lead implementation of the AHC Model in Dallas, in collaboration with clinical delivery sites, CBOs, state Medicaid agencies, and other community stakeholders. Bridge organizations across the country were predominantly health systems and hospitals, but also included nonprofits like PCCI, health IT providers, academic institutions, health plans, and a public health agency. PCCI partnered with 17 clinical sites, representing five Dallas health care systems and more than 100 local CBOs, to establish the DAHC. The Model began in May 2017 and ended in April 2022. Beneficiary screenings began in the summer of 2018 following a 12-month pre-implementation period. Using a CMS-developed HRSN screening tool, PCCI and its partners screened 12,548 unique Dallas County beneficiaries meeting the criteria for Model eligibility.

As you can imagine, making a program as large as this (and involving mass screenings in a healthcare setting) operational, with multiple players involved, was no small task. We had to complete a significant amount of work before we even began speaking to patients. We first had to establish the collaborative partnerships needed, including an Advisory Board, which fortunately for DAHC was made up of key community stakeholders and Texas Medicaid, to help provide key insights and drive our work. We also had to establish the infrastructure, standard operating procedures, and workflows in the early stages of the program. CMS set quarterly targets for screening and navigation so we had a clear goal of how many individuals we would need to navigate each month to satisfy the targets.

DAHC: Implementation

When we first started screening individuals, we were based in clinical sites, as we thought that we could conduct screening for HRSNs as part of that encounter. However, it quickly became apparent that we would struggle to meet our CMS targets using this approach. It was difficult to get participation from individuals who were understandably focused on their immediate health needs driving the clinical visit and unable to dedicate time or attention to completing the screening questionnaire. Clinical site staff also had more pressing priorities and completing the screening was not at the top of the list. Using these lessons learned, we were able to shift our approach to a successful, telephonic post-visit screening. Using our data science expertise, our team was able to create automated daily lists of potentially eligible individuals that our CHWs could call each day. This allowed us to avoid calling the same individual repeatedly, and also gave us a large pool of people to contact each day. The beneficiary feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Having someone reach out to them after an ED visit or inpatient discharge made them feel cared for, and it was easy for a trusting rapport to be established. We also found that it was much more favorable for the individuals we were screening to answer questions over the phone in their own environment, versus a stressful clinical environment.

Community Health Worker Outreach

CHWs employed a survey using the 10-question, CMS AHC HRSN screening tool that, in addition to asking questions about HRSNs, confirmed navigation eligibility. The screening process established:

  • The beneficiary’s self-reported number of ED visits over the past year.
  • If this number was two or more and the beneficiary was insecure in at least one of the five core HRSN areas, the beneficiary was eligible for navigation.
  • If this number was one or fewer, the CHW completed the survey but then informed the beneficiary that they were ineligible. The CHW provided referrals (for any identified need) if the beneficiary was interested.

Active Navigation

The final stage of the DAHC workflow consisted of navigating the beneficiary. Once an eligible beneficiary completed the AHC HRSN screening and personal interview, the CHW provided a list of CBO referrals best suited to meet the beneficiary’s needs (e.g., for food insecurity, referral to a food bank; for transportation issues, referral to free/low cost transportation resources).

Data Modeling and Analysis

As detailed in the NEJM Catalyst article, to assess the impact of navigation on beneficiary health care utilization and expenditures, PCCI constructed a control cohort of beneficiaries who matched as closely as possible the demographic and clinical characteristics of the beneficiaries in the intervention cohort.

For the purposes of our analysis, we opted to use only actual Parkland Health (Parkland) cost data for eligible beneficiaries as captured by Parkland’s EMR and financial accounting systems, as historical experience suggested the vast majority of Parkland beneficiaries repetitively use Parkland as their primary source of care. We wanted to be able to identify whether the positive results we had seen were truly due to the program, versus changes in healthcare utilization as a result of the pandemic.

Figure 1 illustrates the key steps involved in the DAHC program and the corresponding number of beneficiaries engaged at each step of the process, and in the creation of our matched control group.

Although a highly complex undertaking, the DAHC results highlighted the benefits of addressing HRSN within the framework of a connected community of care model. We hope that our experience and the results we found will inspire other organizations who may be thinking about setting up a program such as this. We are happy to share our lessons learned along the way!

About the Author

Dr. Jacqueline Naeem, MD, is a Senior Medical Director/Program Director AHC at PCCI. She is a graduate of the University of Manchester Medical School, Manchester, England, where she also obtained her post-graduate diploma in Psychiatry at the University of Manchester. She undertook postgraduate training in both psychiatry and general practice also in the UK, as well as working as a medical school examiner. Since joining PCCI, Dr. Naeem has used her clinical experience and unique insights in several projects, particularly those with an emphasis on social determinants of health and also mental behavioral projects. Dr. Naeem was also the program leader for the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Accountable Health Communities (AHC) Model in Dallas County.

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[1] This project was supported by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award totaling $4.5M with 100 percent funded by CMS/HHS. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by CMS/HHS, or the U.S. Government.

Inside the New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst Article on PCCI’s Successful Management of the Dallas Accountable Health Communities Model

The globally recognized leader in healthcare publishing, the New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst (NEJM Catalyst), has distributed an in-depth article authored by PCCI detailing its successful journey managing the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Accountable Health Communities (AHC) Model in Dallas County1.

To view the NEJM Catalyst article, click here: https://catalyst.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/CAT.22.0149

The NEJM Catalyst article offers the results of this five-year initiative, which included partnerships with the region’s top healthcare providers and community-based organizations (CBOs), that demonstrates its positive impact on health care outcomes for some of the most vulnerable Dallas County residents.

The peer reviewed NEJM Catalyst article outlines the purpose of the AHC Model in testing whether systematically identifying and addressing Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries’ health-related social needs (HRSN), i.e., food, housing, transportation, utilities, and interpersonal safety, through screening, referral, and community navigation services impacts total health care costs and reduces inpatient and outpatient utilization.

The article further describes how bridge organizations (such as PCCI) served as ‘hubs’ in their communities, forming partnerships with their state Medicaid Agencies, local clinical delivery sites, and CBOs. The Dallas AHC (DAHC) included five major healthcare systems (Parkland Health, Baylor Scott & White, Children’s Health, Methodist Health System, and Metrocare Services), Texas Health and Human Services Commission (TX HHSC), and more than 100 CBOs who provided critical social services to meet the needs of residents in Dallas County ZIP codes with high concentrations of unmet HRSN.

Written by PCCI clinical experts and leaders of all aspects of the DAHC, the NEJM Catalyst article offers a comprehensive look at the full five-year initiative in Dallas and its impact on HRSN, utilization, and costs. This analysis includes critical details (and lessons learned) in the DAHC’s planning and implementation as well as methodology, results, and a look forward.

“We are so proud of the opportunity to lead such a meaningful initiative in partnership with CMS, TX HHSC, our participating healthcare systems, and the hundreds of other North Texas organizations who participated. The innovations, learnings, and results are invaluable and can hopefully serve as a blueprint for expanding these efforts regionally and even to other markets in our collective journey to address the social and personal determinants of health of our most vulnerable families,” said Steve Miff, PCCI’s CEO and President. “The significant number of individuals screened and navigated could not have been possible without the amazing support of the hospital systems and many CBOs in Dallas that actually delivered services to the people who came through the DAHC. This article shows the true scope and community-wide effort that makes programs like this successful.”

The NEJM Catalyst article, co-authored by PCCI’s Jacqueline Naeem, MD, Estefania Salazar-Contreras, Venky Sundaram, PhD, Leslie Wainwright, PhD, Keith Kosel, PhD, and Miff, provided strong evidence of the benefit of addressing HRSNs in a comprehensive manner using active navigation within the framework of a connected community of care model that coordinates efforts between clinical and community services.

“The NEJM Catalyst article digs deep into what our challenges were and the steps we took to test how addressing HRSNs improves utilization and health of vulnerable populations,” said Leslie Wainwright, PhD, PCCI’s Chief Funding and Innovation Officer. “Because of the tremendous effort and success we had in identifying, screening, and navigating so many individuals, this article is able to show some clear, thought-provoking results that will give us a logical path forward as we seek ways to address the needs of those most at-risk in our communities.”

The article reports that during the initiative’s five-year course, PCCI and its partners screened 12,548 individuals and identified more than 19,000 distinct needs, with 61% of individuals having two or more concurrent needs. Through the referral process, CBOs provided a multitude of support services, including more than 200,000 pounds of food and $540,000 in utility and rent assistance.

Additionally, the article shows that actively navigated individuals experienced a greater decrease in per-person ED visits.

“This was a tremendous project that garnered some exciting results, which is why the NEJM Catalyst article is so important for sharing how communities can make this work,” said PCCI’s Jacqueline Naeem, MD, Senior Medical Director/Program Director AHC. “But while the article shows important results, this is about more than just data, this is about the people in need who benefited substantially from the screenings, navigations, and participation in the initiative. The stories we heard of the lives we touched during the five-year program is a lasting legacy of the work our entire community put forward.”

In addition to the DAHC work and with the goal to help other municipalities build their own connected communities of care, PCCI also published an in-depth guidebook, “Building Connected Communities of Care.” This is the definitive guide for taking action using social determinants of health, with practical actionable insights from PCCI’s experience building, deploying, and expanding a connected community of care in Dallas. For more information on “Building Connected Communities of Care,” click here: https://pcci1.wpengine.com/playbook/

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[1] This project was supported by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award totaling $4.5M with 100 percent funded by CMS/HHS. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by CMS/HHS, or the U.S. Government.

New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst: The Dallas Accountable Health Community – Its Impact on Health-Related Social Needs, Care, and Costs

The New England Journal of Medicine/Catalyst published a paper by PCCI on the challenges and successes during the Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation’s 5-year involvement in a federally supported study of care delivery efforts to address #SDOH through community collaboration and patient navigation:

Click here for the full story: https://catalyst.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/CAT.22.0149

PCCI IMPACT: Serving The Whole Community

PCCI strives to achieve the broadest community-wide impact through: (1) support of initiatives closing the gap between
providing clinical care and addressing non-medical needs to positively impact whole-person health; (2) support of
Parkland and its CHNA strategic priorities; and (3) support of PCHP as it strives to quantify community impact.

Below is a sample of PCCI’s work that is having an important impact on our community. For a much more detailed report, contact us for a copy of PCCI’s Annual Impact Report, where PCCI’s actions are shared in much greater detail.

To get the full Annual Impact Report, please click HERE, select “other” and in the message box, add “Annual Impact Report” to receive your electronic copy.