In November 2018, the Delaware Health Care Commission https://dhss.delaware.gov as part of the State Innovation Model (SIM), awarded the first value-based payment reform mini grant to Christiana Care Health System. The grant funding for $62,168 was awarded to Christiana Care Health System’s CareLink Behavioral Health Medical Home Pilot to test a new reimbursement model to improve the coordination of patient care.
The new reimbursement model will enable the integration of behavioral health within primary care practices. The model will focus on a subset of AmeriHealth Medicaid members with chronic behavioral health conditions as a primary diagnosis.
Also, on December 14, 2018, eight additional value-based payment reform grants were awarded to healthcare providers in the state to facilitate data integration, improve the coordination of patient care, to increase readiness to integrate into ACOs, or to operate through an Alternative Payment Method (APM).
The awards available through the Value-Based Payment Reform Fund ranging from $20,000 to $250,000 must be completed by January 31, 2019. The Commission received 45 applications from primary care providers, behavioral health providers, hospitals, ACOs, FQHCs, and clinically integrated networks which must be licensed in the State of Delaware. The Commission expects to award a few more additional grants for small projects for up to $50,000 and large projects up to $250,000, based on the scope of the project.
One grant was awarded to Westside Family Healthcare https://www.wfhcenter.org for $179,190 to enable the FQHCs to deal with APMs by focusing on the use of health information technology to identify and coordinate the care for high-risk cost to patients.
The funding will also be used identify barriers limiting patients from seeking the appropriate level of care and improve data integration with one of its Medicaid Managed Care payers to enable the use of clinical data for pay-for-value program performance. Some of the work will involve integrating Westside’s Allscripts EHRs system with the Delaware Health Information Network (DHIN).
MedNet https://www.medicalsocietyofdelaware.org was awarded $200,230 to speed up the development of a population health management platform by expediting the integration of clinical data from the Electronic Medical Records platform across the MedNet network.
The Nemours/A.I. DuPont Hospital for Children https://wwwnemours.org received $200,000 to more rapidly integrate into an ACO or Clinically Integrated Network (CIN) or to operate through an APM, as well as to ensure data integration infrastructure analytics to improve the coordination of patient care.
Brandywine Counseling and Community Services received $111,716 to establish a data project https://www.brandywinecounseling.com. The project will reorganize the institutional structure to accommodate value-based payments plus improve the coordination of patient care especially for clients with co-occurring disorders.
The other award recipients include:
- Nanticoke Hospital received $250,000 to conduct a study on global budgeting and how it could be implemented by Nanticoke and the State of Delaware
- Stoney Batter Family Medicine $73,000 to upgrade their Allscripts system
- Delaware Health Net for $34,375to develop cost-of-care analytics tool to define the cost of a chronic condition population when care is provided at a health center
- Stoney Batter Family Medicine received a second award for $20,000 to design a training program for care coordinators and providers on how to effectively use emergency department and hospital readmissions using hospital-based admission information from DHIN and the EHR
For more information, go to the Delaware Health Care Commission at https://dhss.delaware.gov.