How is Help Desk integrating with State Policy?
North Carolina state policy initiatives are increasingly addressing how social drivers of health and well-being can be integrated into patient care. With the Healthy Opportunities pilots and introduction of NCCARE360, it is important to consider how the Help Desk program will both align with and contribute to these broader state movements.
Healthy Opportunities & NCCARE360: Background
The Healthy Opportunities Pilots is a 5 year long initiative in which North Carolina will use Medicaid funds for non-medical interventions. Under the states’ Medicaid 1115 waiver, $650 million of state and federal Medicaid funding can be used to cover services addressing social needs linked to health and health outcomes, such as housing, food, transportation, interpersonal violence and toxic stress, and capacity building.
In addition, the North Carolina Department for Health and Human Services includes in its strategies for addressing SDOH the development of NCCARE360, a statewide coordinated care network that aims to electronically connect individuals with unmet social needs to community resources. Through NCCARE360, health care and human service providers will have access to a shared technology platform to track client outcomes and connections with community based organizations. Other initiatives in NCCARE360 also include developing a statewide resource directory with a call center for resource navigators, a data repository for resource data, and an engagement team to create a coordinated network. This program was piloted in January 2019 and rolled out throughout the state on a county-by-county basis.
Future Integration of Help Desk and NCCARE360
With the development of NCCARE360, Help Desk envisions a future in which it is fully integrated with this larger statewide initiative. Help Desk’s unique value lies in its human capital. CBOs may not have the capacity to perform follow-up calls for every individual that does not connect with the resources they were referred to through NCCARE360. However, Help Desk could partner with either CBOs, healthcare providers, or NCCARE360 to perform the necessary follow-up calls. Using navigation through direct volunteer-to-patient efforts, Help Desk’s team of motivated students can provide the essential human element to ensure that individuals in the NCCARE360 system are being fully supported.
Resources for more information on NCDHHS and Healthy Opportunities:
- All of NCDHHS’s policy memos, a “master page” for any questions you might have on the 1115 waiver to revamp NC Medicaid: https://www.ncdhhs.gov/assistance/medicaid-transformation/proposed-program-design/policy-papers
- Fact sheet on Medicaid Transformation (ie the 1115 waiver): https://files.nc.gov/ncdhhs/CMS-1115-Approval-FactSheet-FINAL-20181024.pdf
- Fact sheet on Health Opportunities Pilots: https://files.nc.gov/ncdhhs/SDOH-HealthyOpptys-FactSheet-FINAL-20181114.pdf
- Standardized SDH Screening questions (p4 in doc) https://files.nc.gov/ncdhhs/documents/SDOH-Screening-Tool_Paper_FINAL_20180405.pdf
Resources for NCCARE360:
- Quick primer on NCCARE360 https://www.ncdhhs.gov/about/department-initiatives/healthy-opportunities/nccare360
- Fact sheet on NCCARE360 https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/1945678/NCCARE360/NCCARE360%20Overview.pdf
- NCCARE360 Press https://nccare360.org/press/
- Press Release on NCCARE360’s 1000th referral https://nccare360.org/nccare360-announces-1000th-referral/
- NCCARE360 Rollout Map (they’re in 93/100 counties!) https://nccare360.org/where-we-are/
