Health Care Innovation Awards: Connecticut

Notes and Disclaimers:

• Projects shown may have operated in other states (see the Geographic Reach)
• Descriptions and project data (e.g. gross savings estimates, population served, etc.) are 3 year estimates provided by each organization and are based on budget submissions required by the Health Care Innovation Awards application process.
• While all projects were expected to produce cost savings beyond the 3 year grant award, some may not achieve net cost savings until after the initial 3-year period due to start-up-costs, change in care patterns and intervention effect on health status.

FOUNDATION FOR CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY COLLEGES

Project Title: “Transitions clinic network:  linking high-risk Medicaid patients from prison to community primary care”
Geographic Reach: Alabama, California, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Puerto Rico
Funding Amount: $6,852,153
Estimated 3-Year Savings: $8,115,855

Summary: City College of San Francisco (CCSF), University of California at San Francisco, and Yale University are collaborating to address the health care needs of high risk/high cost Medicaid and Medicaid-eligible individuals with chronic conditions released from prison. Targeting eleven community health centers in seven states and Puerto Rico, the program will work with the Department of Corrections to identify patients with chronic medical conditions prior to release and will use community health workers trained by City College of San Francisco to help these individuals navigate the healthcare system, find primary care and other medical and social services, and coach them in chronic disease management. The outcomes will include reduced reliance on emergency room care, fewer hospital admissions, and lower cost, with improved patient health and better access to appropriate care. Over a three-year period, this innovation will create an estimated 22 jobs and train an estimated 49 workers. The new workforce will include 12 community health workers, 11 part-time panel managers, two part-time project coordinators, one research analyst and two part-time project staff.

HEALTH RESOURCES IN ACTION

Project Title: “New England asthma innovations collaborative”
Geographic Reach: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont
Funding Amount: $4,040,657
Estimated 3-Year Savings: $4,100,000

Summary:

The "New England Asthma Innovation Collaborative” (NEAIC) is a multi-state, multi-sector partnership convened by the Asthma Regional Council of New England (ARC), a program of Health Resources in Action (HRiA), that includes health care providers, payers, and policy makers aimed at creating an innovative Asthma Marketplace in New England that will increase the supply and demand for high-quality, cost-effective health care services delivered to Medicaid children with severe asthma. Our goal is to create a sustainable infrastructure that robustly delivers evidence-based cost-effective asthma care to New England children with severe disease, and creates viable Medicaid reimbursement mechanisms to support these programs over the long-term. The targeted population is high-cost Medicaid and CHIP pediatric patients (2 – 17 years), with a focus on those with uncontrolled symptoms that have a history of using expensive urgent care. NEAIC includes following components:
1. Workforce development:  NEAIC will: a) sponsor Asthma Training to increase the number of well qualified cost-effective providers, including certified asthma educators (AE-Cs) and community health works (CHWs) with a specialty in asthma; and b) explore CHW asthma credentialing program that payers and provider practices across NE have requested and can benefit from. All of this will contribute to higher quality and culturally competent care, and we believe will help to support innovative Medicaid reimbursement as a result of demonstrated cost-effective outcomes.
2. Rapid service delivery expansion for over 1300 high-risk children with asthma in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Vermont. NEAIC employs the following components of care: 1) Asthma self-management education 2) Home environmental assessment with the provision of minor-to-moderate environmental intervention supplies to reduce asthma triggers; and 3) Use of non-physician providers shown to be cost-effective deliverers of this level of care, particularly community health workers (CHWs) and certified asthma educators (AE-Cs).  
3. Committed Medicaid payers in several New England states will work to sustain these programs by piloting reimbursement methodologies with the service providers, should the service model results demonstrate the goals of delivering better health, improving care and lowering costs..
4. A Payer and Provider Learning Community across all six New England states to rapidly disseminate demonstrated improvements to the quality and cost of asthma care, share viable reimbursement systems developed, successfully incorporate CHWs into the asthma care team, and disseminate best practices. The Learning Community builds on ARC’s existing networks and partnerships across the region, and is meant to increase awareness about these successful models with the goal of broader adoption across New England.  

NEAIC’s components build in continuous quality improvement measures through rigorous data collection/analysis, strong partnerships, and commitments from interested payers and policy makers. The establishment and promotion of CHWs as strong health care delivery partners addressing environmental conditions as part and parcel of the disease management program, with reimbursement by payers, make this an innovative model for broad dissemination and potential for replication across the nation.

TransforMED

Project Title: "Multi-community partnership between TransforMED, hospitals in the VHA system and a technology/data analytics company to support transformation to PCMH of practices connected with the hospitals and development of “Medical Neighborhood”
Geographic Reach: Alabama, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Dakota, West Virginia
Funding Amount: $20,750,000
Estimated 3- Year Savings: $52,824,000

Summary: TransforMED received an award for a primary care redesign project across 15 communities to support care coordination among Patient-Centered Medical Homes (PCMH), specialty practices, and hospitals, creating “medical neighborhoods.” The project will use a sophisticated analytics engine, provided by a vendor, Phytel, to identify high risk patients and coordinate care across the medical neighborhood while driving PCMH transformation in a number of primary care practices in each community. Truly comprehensive care will improve care transitions and reduce unnecessary testing, leading to lower costs with better outcomes. TransforMED will work with VHA to capture learnings from leading performers. Cost trends will be identified via claims data using an analytic tool provided by a vendor, Cobalt Talon. Over a three-year period, TransforMED’s program will train an estimated 3,024 workers and create an estimated 22 jobs.

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