In partnership with the National Council for Behavioral Health, the Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS) released a new report examining the the successes and challenges associated with implementing value-based payment in Medicaid behavioral health care.
Earlier this year, the Delta Center conducted a Safari Visit to Compass Health Network, just outside of St. Louis, Missouri. The intent of the Safari Visit was to use the strength of peer-to-peer sharing as a technical assistance tool by allowing attendees to see and hear about a concrete demonstration of how primary care and behavioral health collaboration and sustainable payment is being done.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) sponsored the Delta Center to conduct an environmental scan about how to best advance value-based payment and care (VBP/C) in rural areas.
Community health centers and community behavioral health organizations exist in a complex ecosystem. Partnerships can help these providers to thrive while providing quality care, but building partnerships can also be an adaptive challenge requiring changes in values and attitudes. “Soft” skills become essential, whether in truly understanding partners’ priorities, creating “productive disequilibrium” to bring about change, or reframing requests to get a different result.
Community health centers and community behavioral health centers are facing a time of unprecedented complexity and uncertainty. There is generally a feeling of building the payment reform plane while flying it — where is this payment reform plane going? In the face of these challenges, organizations like primary care associations (PCAs) and behavioral health state associations (BHSAs) are critical.
The Delta Center for a Thriving Safety Net recently announced that it has awarded 10 grants totaling $2.4 million to primary care and behavioral health state associations nationwide, as part of its first cohort of the Delta Center State Learning & Action Collaborative. The Collaborative will bring grantees representing Community Health Centers and behavioral health organizations together to learn from experts and their peers with the goal of advancing value-based payment and care in the safety net.
Why “The Delta Center”? The word delta is both a symbol for change and connotes confluence (as in a river delta) and thus aligns with our goals of inspiring innovation and facilitating collaborative learning.