Can I Sign Connecticut RFP

Can i document type sign rfp connecticut

good morning everyone and thank you for joining us today and where we're going to provide an overview of a new opportunity provided by the Connecticut Health Foundation to integrate community-based organizations with healthcare providers the webinar today our speakers our presenters are Tiffany Donaldson from the Connecticut Health Foundation and Deborah's on turns health management associates just a few housekeeping items before we begin this webinar is being recorded and will be archived at archives on Connecticut health website for future access all participants have been please some you upon entry but we will open lines at the end of the webinar for Q&A so to ask a question during that portion of the presentation please feel free to either raise your hand by pressing the green yes button in your in your pain or you can also Pat type questions into the chat pane you can do that at any point and we'll just review those questions at the end during the Q&A or you can save your questions too to ask se at the end of the presentation with that I like to turn it over to Tiffany to provide an overview of the webinar with me yes Thank You Melissa first I want to echo Melissa's thank-you for all of you who are joining this webinar we a Connecticut Health Foundation are excited to see the level of interest in this RFP related to integrating community-based organizations with healthcare providers for our webinar today we will be providing the background of our organization the Connecticut Health Foundation we'll also describe the request for proposal and give you more details and lastly we will discuss how to apply and prove as Louis alluded to an opportunity for questions and answers as Melissa noted my name is Tiffany Dalton I am vice president of the program here at the Connecticut Health Foundation our foundation is the largest health philanthropy here in the state of Connecticut we are a statewide organization and we started in 1999 our approach to our work is that we provide grant making primarily around demonstration models research we also do public policy research we provide technical assistance and also convenings all with the goal and purpose of improving the health of residents here in Connecticut our foundation from its onset has always been focused on looking at health disparities and we in particular in 2013 started to focus more on health equity particularly for populations of color here in Connecticut our work takes what we call assistance change lends to this approach we understand that we are trying to approach health equity for the entire state of Connecticut and when you think about health care although we have some dollars to send and to provide for grant making it really is small as relates to the total healthcare dollars here in Connecticut so when we say systems change what we are leading to is changing the policies and the practices for how care is delivered here in Connecticut our organization focuses on looking at sustainable ways for us to address health equity here in the state of Connecticut and that brings us to this RFP as an organization we recognize that most of what impacts one's health is outside of the healthcare setting there is data that indicate that only around 10% of one's health is determined by what happens in the health care settings and most of what impacts one's health is what we consider the social determinants of health so that is where one wins where one worships play eat learn all of those things that we consider a part of our daily lives is really what impact health we have recognized this for a while as a foundation and what we are focused on with this RFP is how do we effectively bridge the community-based organizations who are often addressing the social determinants of health how do we effectively bridge those organizations with healthcare organizations you're going to hear systems change throughout this webinar and I'm going to Lou to it again because what we're looking for our sustainable linkages between those organizations dad's on is going to go into a little bit more detail but overall we're trying to figure out how can we make meaningful and long-lasting connections between community-based organizations and healthcare providers are in goal as an organization and particularly as well with this RFP is for us to see people of color here in the state of Connecticut to see that their health outcomes improve we want to assure that all people of Connecticut have the ability to have their healthiest life regardless of their demographics and that health outcomes are equal or the potential for good health code outcomes are equal across all populations so our focus again is on building the sustainable linkages between community-based organizations and clinical providers and assuring that the health of people of color here in the state of Connecticut to assure that the health outcomes are improved and so with that I'm going to turn it over to Deb Dodd who is going to go into more details about this particular opportunity Deb great thank you very much Tiffany and Melissa if you could fix the slide quickly so they can see the whole slide okay great thank you sorry folks a little technical difficulty so the opportunity essentially as Tiffany said is to support having clinical care providers and community based organizations integrate among themselves in up to two connecticut communities and in particular the goal is to have those communities have significant populations of color and the intent is is for these new systems to be able to address the multiple factors in the multiple inequities that are influencing people's health and ultimately to be able to create something a system of care and services that's more seamless and holistic so the foundation is going to provide some seed funding to pay for some of the expenses is doing that as well as some technical assistance which I'll talk about in a moment and it what it's looking for is for a group of at least three community-based organizations in a community that have a connection to at least one clinical partner in that community and the community approach is really key here because instead of just having one CBO and one clinical partner link the intent is to be able to make more change within that community and among service and clinical providers that actually serve common populations so the funds and assistance of the intent of those is to be able to support the readiness of the collaboration of CBO's in order to pursue those integration strategies and then all the way through being able to implement those integration strategies with at least one clinical partner in the community so it could be that it ends up being more than three CBO's it could be an additional clinical partner but at minimum it has to be three CBO's in a community plus 1 clinical partner so as if Tiffany said a central focus of the foundations is health equity and this is really an opportunity that very much is focused and intended to benefit people of color and as Tiffany setting you're going to again hear this a lot it really does target the system's change so the goal is not to create to use these funds and use this opportunity to create new services or programs but it's really about putting the things in place that would enable the community-based organizations to be ready to and all the way through implementation of the inter integration systems with their clinical partners so it would be for things like doing and establishing shared assessments among the different entities workflows data sharing agreements mechanisms for actually being able to share data sort of all of that that system worked behind the scene that would actually make the integration strategy work and work on a daily basis and that creating sort of the new ways of working among the partners and then having the systems underlying those to be able to support it is really a core sustainability strategy and what the foundation will be asking of whoever the awardees are is to consider sustainability from the beginning so that the decisions that you would make from a design perspective and an implementation perspective are targeted towards developing a sustainable integrated system and that's why the system's pieces that is so critical next slide so the grant objectives and I'll go through there's three phases of the grant but ultimately as we said the goal is for the collaborative of community-based organizations to become ready to integrate to be able to negotiate formal agreements with clinical providers and the clinical collaborators could be primary care providers it could be advanced networks or it could be hospitals and there's three phases so the first phase is really focused on readiness and that you know we have timeframes in here but the one thing I would say about the time frames is some of that may change depending on who the awardees are so these are estimates in terms of what it would take to complete each phase so the first phase is really focused on readiness among the community-based organizations to be able to design and negotiate an integration strategy with a clinical partner so the first part it would include things like assessing and documenting whatever you know best available data and information you have on if your community-based organization on the populations you serve and this is really critical because clinical partners tend to think in terms of populations that they serve rather than individual programs and services so this is really to be able to get folks on the same page so that they're speaking the same language during negotiation it also would include developing a really in-depth understanding of your clinical partner what their needs are the populations they serve and and that would uncover opportunities to integrate as well as you know guide some of the design and implementation decisions it would also include collecting data that actually demonstrates the performance the you know in quality that is already being achieved by the community-based organizations again important information to have it your fingertips while you're in a negotiation for an integration strategy and then also to do things like to identify gaps in your systems and processes that would have to be addressed in some way when you are implementing it would also include identifying and being able to clearly articulate the value proposition that the community-based organizations are bringing to the table which again is a critical strategy when negotiating and then the last pieces is really the financial part which is being able to clearly define what the financial goals are in the parameters that would have to be part of a negotiation with a partner so the intent would be is that in phase one by the end of it community-based organizations are you know ready and able and have all the information they need available to them to be able to start to negotiate in phase two and then ultimately execute a formal agreement with their clinical partner on a specific integration stress oh gee and the estimate is that probably would take six to ten months again that might change depending on who the partners are and what type of things they've already done together and then the third phase is really where it's about implementation where you actually develop and implement the clinical community integration strategy with your provider partner and again the estimate there is that could take depending on what the strategy is and the Polly who the partners are between eight to twelve months so the intent of this grant is to get all the way through this cycle from readiness to getting agreement in place actually implementing next slide so I want to say a little bit about technical assistance so as we mentioned that there will be some funds that will be available to support some of those one-time expenses that you would have to actually be able to get some of this in place but there will also be technical assistance so the foundation is going to engage external consulting firms who's going to provide that ta to awardees with the attentive of helping them make sure that they can actually achieve the project goals it's it's going to be developed based on who the awardees are and based on you know what their particular needs are but it will include things like training educational materials tools templates as well as some coaching and given what we know in Connecticut and around the country about how community-based organizations and clinical partners have come together if likely is going to include topics like this and probably others so things like IT systems and data and measurement and how do you actually you know what do you have today versus what you need when you implement an integration strategy so likely be some templates and some assistance related to the value proposition for community-based organizations and their services as well as around the financial goals and parameters likely also some assistance about quality improvement and performance management in terms of what you have today and again what you would need under a integration agreement and then also potentially some assistance around partnership negotiations and formal agreements ongoing engagement of community members to inform mr. oh geez and to provide input which is it is an assumption of what or an expectation of what the awardees will actually do and there'll be some technical assistance available to support that and then again there may be other things depending on who the awardees are and things that that they indicate that they need or things that come up along the way that that they might need some help with now the awardees are going to be required to take advantage of these resources but again they're going to be geared towards whoever the awardees are and their specific needs so it should be extremely helpful next slide so I want to say a little bit before I turn it back to Tiffany about the decision-making track criteria so how is the Foundation going to evaluate applicants and it's going to be based on this these four criteria so the first is impact so they're really looking for that there is a demonstrated community need and there's a significant number of community members impacted and particularly as we said before people of color the next one is readiness so I did mention that there is going to be work on readiness among community based organizations to enter into these agreements but the intent is is that there should be some readiness that's already in place that would support being able to do this and the timeframes that we talked about so they'll look at things like the strength of partnership so for example is there already demonstrated engagement and commitment among the CBO's and and with the clinical partner do you really have a good understanding awareness of what the needs and strengths and gaps are related to being able to be successful in this project there's also they're going to be looking at the proposed method so even though there are you know distinct phases and there's going to be some specific technical assistance there's going to be a lot of room for the awardees to decide what their approaches to this so they're going to look at the appropriateness and feasibility of of what your project plan is and what you say your approach is going to be as well as how you talk about the ability to actually be able to generate pardonne meaningful and measurable results they're going to look at the qualifications of the staff and the partner organizations that are participating and then any outcomes you plan to accomplish in year one and over the three years of the project and then the last will be the budget so the appropriateness of the budget request they want to make sure that what you're proposing actually aligns with what the project activities are and then look at it from the lens of impact based on the funds that your request and ultimately who you plan on serving from a client patient perspective and then with that I'm going to turn it back over to Tiffany who will go through some of the remaining details with you Thank You Deb as Deb has alluded in in her phases you can see that this is a three year initiative the way that we approach o r work at the foundation is while we are committed to organizations oftentimes for more than one year we do require that there is an application submitted each year this gives us an opportunity to take a step back and to assess how the year has gone and then to determine the appropriateness of us continuing to fund and most of the time again I would say 95% of the time the foundation is committed however if we recognize that there are some significant issues that have gone on with a particular project it gives us an opportunity to assess that so applications what we do every year the funding for year one is up to $75,000 and again we will see progress in years two and three and determine the funding based upon our assessment for the outgoing years as part of the application process we are asking for two stages we are first asking for a concept paper the this is this concept paper there's only five questions and approximately two pages this will give us an idea of what your proposed projects are and also we as a staff like to work with potential grantees so this will also give us an opportunity to flesh out your project more to work directly with you if we feel like your project should advance to full proposal if your project does advance to full proposal you will see that proposal we will make it available to you on our grants database system called flux and that grant application will be made available to you that application is more detailed obviously compared to the concept paper and the full proposal will include everything your project narrative your proposed method we always asked about culture and linguistic competence your work plan and I want to highlight also letters of support Deb alluded to the fact that the collaborative of community-based organizations need to indicate that there is a relationship with a clinical partner and one of the key letters of support is going to be to be and required to be from one or how many clinical partners you plan to engage with so that letter of supporters our way of knowing that you have a clinical partner who is there and who is willing to work with you throughout this process just a bit related to the timeline I alluded to the fact that we have a grant database called flux you can register for flux and get your login information by going to the website that you see on this page and again this presentation will be made available immediately following the webinar content papers are due April 24 we are going to filter through those pretty quickly and will let individuals know early in May who is being invited to submit a full proposal all proposals are due May 31st and we will be doing site visits in mid-june and those site visits will include my style and depth on is you have heard on the phone and we will be doing tight-fitted for those who have been invited for full proposals and we will be doing notifications by September 26 and just so you all have an understanding of our process we will also as a foundation share your proposals with our board and they ultimately have to approve your current application stuff the timing for us to notify you at the end of September following our board meeting and now we'd like to open it for questions and answers I know that we went through a lot of information between Deb and I and so we do want to give you an opportunity to ask questions I know Melissa is going to unmute line so I would just ask that if you are not asking the questions please make sure that your phone is muted I also want to highlight that is often challenging sometimes for one to ask a question in a large webinar setting and we recognize that so if you have any questions that you did not ask or don't feel comfortable asking in this session again please feel free to use the text box but also please feel free to follow up with me following this webinar and so with that I do want to open it up for any questions great thanks Chris me and Deb and as I mentioned earlier if you you like to ask your question please click on that yes button over by the participant list and I can unmute your line or feel free to enter your questions into the chat pane so we do have one question the question is can you please define what is meant by significant populations of color yes so we are typically looking for the catchment area to serve at least 35 to 40 percent population of color in the catchment area that your grant will be in the population that you're current will be serving okay great you have a second question is there a geographic designation for communities or do you have any preferences for what communities you're hoping that applicants will cover we don't have any preferences at this time again we are hoping that we can get communities that serve a large population of color we don't have any designation per se and how we define a community but I would say that we are looking for a community or geography that is in a particular catchment area so for example we do not want to see a collaborative that is Hartford New Haven in Bridgeport because that isn't necessarily a community however there could be a community of meaning of collaborative of community based organizations specifically in New Haven or specifically in Bridgeport so that's what we mean by a community meaning that it has to be a particular catchment area within the state and not spread across the state related to the collab the collaborative of community based organizations and the health system that one is working with again we don't have any particular communities that we are targeting or have in mind you're really opening this up and this is Deb I would also add for rural communities you know recognizing that you there might be community-based organizations that work across towns which is a very different scenario than you know some of the suburban or urban areas and you know I think Tiffany would agree that as long as the definition for the community as you define it makes sense and that makes sense in your setting and you also have you know the relationships and other things in place that would support it that would be wonderful too great at this time we have one new question come in are there any particular strategies or best practices you're hoping to see in that application Deb I'll let you get started with that yeah the I mean what I would say largely the primary best practice is the emphasis on system so it's not a particular you know off-the-shelf model that would particularly be implemented but it would be that systems approach and thinking through how you actually with data with workflows and with other things actually put together how the connection happens and from a patient and client perspective to create that that seamless system across that that's really if you have the top of mind in terms of what the best practice would be is to emphasize those things I would agree with Deb and I was turning over to Deb as well because you know her organization has done this work nationally and it's difficult for anyone to define what a best practice is for clinical community integration at this point and so it really just depends on what is needed for your particular collaborative and for your health our provider partner what is needed for you all to create sustainable linkages that will last multiple years and the other piece that I would add is to create that from the perspective of how it impacts the clients and patients within a community and so that's one of the things that that we would be looking for that's one of the things that they would likely be some assistance around is how to make sure whatever that system of care that's being developed an integrated system actually can clearly demonstrate that it's achieving the impact you're trying to achieve okay I'm going to combine two questions one of what started with could you define a clinical partner a clinical care partner again and can an organization serve as both a CBO and a clinical partner Deb and I are not in the same room so we're going to have a quiz but yeah we're going to tag to you again over the phone but um you know as Deb ability we can define a clinical partner as any typical health care provider Hospital it can be primary care providers you know we have some Mars primary care provider groups here in the state as a pro health and some other larger so when I say and let me go back to my first point when I say a typical provider you know one of the major health care systems or Hospital here in the state we would define that as a clinical partner and it could also be there you know again we mentioned the advanced networks under the debates and PCMH plus model but it all cuz it could be an ACO or other types of collaborations among clinical providers we also recognize that there are some clinical providers that also provide CBO like sure purposes so you may have a behavioral health provider that is providing clinical services but also providing housing and again in the cut in the concept paper I would suggest if there is a scenario like that describe what you think the approach would be and make the case for it and it would certainly be considered okay um we have a question about how this initiative connected to the state Sims initiative including health enhancement communities the sim community clinical integration program and also the state prevention services initiative Tiffany would you like me to take that one yes I want to like that time it I just will highlight for all of you that Deb is very much very involved in a lot of December related to the health enhancement community so I'm going to turn it over to Deb and Deb I will add in as well and just so you all have context on this webinar as well the foundation is also very much integrated into the state innovation model and representative on a variety of committees and we have supported it from its on fact so we're doing our best to align all of our work but Deb I'll let you take it away great so there's there's three main I would say probably for some initiatives that most relate to this so the one that is the closest to this is the prevention service initiative which are from Health Management Associates also assisted with and and actually we'll be taking a number of lessons and tools that came out of that but that was an initiative focused on diabetes and asthma that was specifically to develop contracts between clinical care providers and community-based organizations so that was a little bit different than this in that this is focused on some community a store Ganesh ins and clinical practice providers and communities and that was sort of month more a you know one one approach but B&C intent is is that is that there would be a lot of lessons that would actually come out of that and it may also be an opportunity for those that were involved in that process to be able to apply to this to essentially be able to take it to the next level so that's the one that's most closely related to this the other one is the health enhancement community initiative which we're also involved with so this is this initiative that the foundation is working on is more related to ensuring that the good work that community-based organizations are doing which they may be doing ultimately when health enhancement communities you know come into existence is connected with the work that's happening in a clinical environment one of the things that we heard when we were out working with existing community collaborators and talking to stakeholders with the health enhancement community initiative is although that's focused on upstream prevention there's a number of folks in the community that actually need prevention and treatment and we want a way for that to be able to happen and this is this so this initiative is one of the ways that it creates the linkage between those two so the vision could be if there's a health enhancement community in a particular community that they may you know work on certain aspects of prevention they may have things like you know home visits or working on housing initiative and that this is one of the arrangements that actually links it back to community to clinical care so it's not an overlap it's probably more like a Venn diagram so that you would actually have that connection in the middle and then either side of that you know working on either more of the community health side of it versus the clinical side of it and then the last one are the last two that relate to it is the primary care modernization initiative which again that it's like the health enhancement to me still in the design phase and that's really trying to bring sort of an advanced level of primary care and primary care means to be able to actually have more funds and do more and have more flexibility to how they deliver care in a primary care setting but that doesn't there would be community linkages particularly through things like community health workers which is the fourth initiative that sim has been working on and again that could very much relate to this in the sense of you know once you know these primary care modernization comes into existence because right now it's still in design phase you might have the clinical providers that are part of this participate under that initiative and they would be in really good position because they would already have these linkages in the community setting which they're going to need ultimately to be able to chase the results that they would have to health enhancement communities primary care modernization those as I said don't exist yet they're still in the design phase but again the vision could be that they would be linked to what those would ultimately do but that this would give you a really good head start in some of that work I think hi I'm not seeing any additional questions if you have a question please feel free to enter it into the chat planning the opposite music and the list we could also unmute everybody in case anyone that wants to ask a direct question good um I'm not seeing anybody raise their hand speak and I've been checking that I could unmute the line all right so I'll do that now please we'll just give you a moment if you do not have a question please put your own line on mute before I am mute everyone okay here we go so much for that experiment okay never mind I think use every point again I am Not sure that's going to work out I prefer people just raise their hand and indicate if they have a question that way I can unmute your individual line you so far I'm not seeing anymore questions you LC is another question come in oh I think we addressed this earlier can a clinical care partner be the lead agency we didn't address that specifically you Debra Tiffany you want to address that oh I'm sorry whenever you did everyone in you did your lines over the unmute Deb organization as Deb I'm sorry dad Deb could you start again I'm sorry you're on you that's fine so the question was is can a clinical provider be the lead and Tiffany did you want to answer that or would you like me to I think you had started when you were on mute to go so the intent is for it to be a community-based organization as the lead applicant but having a partner who is a clinical provider the however we mentioned earlier the scenario of there might be a community-based organization that is also a clinical provider reverse and I will ask let Tiffany answer that part of it but the overall intent is for a community-based organization to be in the lead on behalf of the partners so if for example you had three or four community-based organizations they would have to pick one and that would be who the lead is and then they would have they would indicate who their clinical partner or partners are but Tiffany how what advice would you give folks if somebody is thinking to be a lead applicant who is both a clinical provider and offers CBO type services so I would say in that instance again and I am going to go back and give a little bit more history so the foundation contemplated whether or not the applicant should be a clinical provider for example and we really lean toward community-based organizations based upon us seeing the need of community-based organizations to really be ready for true integration with clinical Bar partners and when I say seeing the need we've also heard in community-based organizations around capacity around being able to receive and share data and so we really wanted to make sure that we were supporting community-based organizations in integration process understanding that a lot of clinical providers are there already receiving data they're prepared a lot of them are prepared for some of the capacity all they already have the capacity that we see community-based organizations might be missing so in that instance and again highlighting that the application needs to come from a collaborative of community-based organizations so there has to be three or more organizations that are a part of this application I would lean towards the side of the organization that may be providing both clinical services and providing some social determinance services I would lean towards the side of them being a part of that group of CBO's but maybe working or allowing them another CBO to be the lead applicant as Deb I think is a bit alluded to questioning in how much of the funding can be used for personnel well as the foundation overall we do not provide direct services in any of our grant making and what we mean by that is that we are not anticipating that we would fund a brand new resource that would only be for this project and once the project is over that resource will be gone that is not what we want to see however we know that if this project is going to require personnel to support it and so we don't necessarily have a limitation on how the money can be allocated to the personnel who are supporting the project I will also mention that we provide related to indirect cost that we typically apply around I would say 10 to 12 percent for indirect project cost in most of our projects are there other questions Melissa not I not as of yet we're caught up on the questions but if anybody have a question please feel free to enter it into the chat pane I think at this point seeing that there are any more questions or not seeing any hands raised I think at this point we can in this particular webinar but as I alluded to at the beginning of our Q&A session if you do have questions please feel free to reach out to me and I will loop in Deb as she well know that both of us are more than happy to answer any particular questions I also would say that again we are going to very much use the concept papers as a starting point for us to begin a dialogue between potential applicants so please feel free to ask us questions before the concept paper period but also know that we will also be looping back following the concept paper period so that we can continue an ongoing dialogue with those who are potential applicants I just want to thank all of you for joining this webinar and again for your level of interest we are excited as a foundation to be delving into this work and we're really hopeful that we will engage new and Wonder full partners through this RFP and we are hopeful that you are interested in partnering with us around this really critical work to address the need of populations of color and assurance that our state is healthier overall so I just want to thank you all for joining this webinar and I look forward to hearing from many of you thank you