HHS announced plans for the CMS Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation https://innovation.cms.gov to fund up to $157 million. The funding would be used to screen beneficiaries for health-related social needs and used to provide beneficiaries with referrals so that their unmet health-related social needs could be helped by services in their communities.
The five year program called the “Accountable Health Communities Model” (AHC) is the first CMS Innovation Center model to focus on the health-related social needs of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries.
With the funding provided under the Affordable Care Act, the AHC Model will support up to 44 bridge organizations which will deploy a common, comprehensive screening assessment for health-related social needs among all Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries participating at clinical delivery sites.
The issues screened may include housing instability, food and utility needs, interpersonal violence, and transportation limitations. Bridge organizations must be able to ensure the flow of relevant data from clinical delivery sites and their AHC navigators to CMS and contractors for monitoring and evaluation purposes.
Health IT will enable the AHC model to operate by making the right health data available to the right people at the right time across multiple organizations in a way that can be meaningfully used.
By using health IT, providers, beneficiaries and their families, public health entities, and community service providers will be able to electronically collect, share, and use health information to achieve better care and smarter spending.
Eligible applicants for the AHC model may include community-based organizations, hospitals and health systems, institutions of higher education, local government entities, tribal organizations, and for-profit and not-for-profit local and national entities. Applicants must have the capacity to develop and maintain a referral network with clinical delivery sites along with community services providers.
The Letter of Intent to apply is due February 8, 2016 with the Cooperative Agreement Application due March 31, 2016.
Go to https://innovation.cms.gov.initiatives/ahcm to view the initial Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) (CMS-1P1-17-001). For more information, email accountablehealthcommunities@cms.hhs.gov.