Community health workers (CHWs) are critical members of the health center workforce. From responding to COVID-19 to supporting chronic disease management, CHWs increase patient access to care and improve health outcomes. There are many resources that offer operational guidance for health center CHW programs, but few that focus on the financial aspects and sustainability.   This session, targeted to health center CFOs, will feature a panel of CFOs who have implemented successful CHW programs. The panel will describe how and why health centers have hired, trained, and financed CHWs and outline the role of health center CFOs in CHW goal-setting conversations. Panelists will also discuss strategies for measuring return on investment (ROI) and sustainability of CHW programs. The session will conclude with an overview of the policy landscape for CHW reimbursement.

During COVID, HRSA has continued to monitor and assess Health Center Program Compliance via virtual Operational Site Visits and its updated Health Center Program Site Visit Protocol. For health center administrators and staff, preparing for these episodic assessments can be time-consuming and stressful. In these challenging times, it is imperative for health centers to create and implement systems that promote continuous compliance and that ultimately serve as the foundation for health center excellence. This session will feature the perspective of independent consultants who work as OSV reviewers and have unique insights on how to prepare for the OSV and create systems that lead to continuous compliance. The session will offer a practical overview of the Health Center Program requirements, HRSA’s Health Center Program Compliance Manual and Site Visit Protocol (updated in May 2021); insights on how to navigate the Virtual OSV process; and potential pain points and common areas of conditions/findings. Strategies for preparing your board and health center and steps your center can take to ensure continuous compliance will also be highlighted.  

As PRAPARE is increasingly used by care teams nationally to assess patient social determinants of health (SDOH) needs, it is critical to have a standardized system to track the social interventions provided in response. Such systems can promote cross-sector collaboration to assess and address social factors to facilitate comprehensive care coordination to “close the loop” for patients in achieving health equity. Use of the national standardized social interventions protocol would also promote collaborative data collection, aggregation, reporting, exchange, and communication by cross-sector partners to comprehensively assess and address SDOH and close disparity gaps for their patients. This session will examine the PRAPARE Social Interventions Protocol that integrates stakeholder lessons learned and best practices collected through an iteractive process of development with a national Social Interventions Technical Expert Panel (TEP) of diverse cross-sector partners. Experiences of organizations in conducting PDSA evaluations, using the protocol, will also be shared. Overall, the vision for the PRAPARE Social Interventions Protocol is an integrated system facilitating access to critical patient social care information from cross-sector providers, so that care teams internally and externally can collaborate in a more effective, coordinated way to proactively assess and address patient social risks.

Community health centers received an influx of funding from several federal stimulus sources in response to COVID-19 via CARES Act and American Rescue Plan Act Funding. These funding streams will have compliance requirements that CHCs need to be aware of and understand regarding the impact of handling cost principles and administrative requirements in accordance with the Uniform Grant Guidance (SuperCircular), Subpart F for the federal Single Audit. Within the CARES Act, CHCs received funding from the Provider Relief Fund administered by HRSA. Presenters will address best practices and compliance requirements in accordance with Uniform Guidance. This session will help your organization better prepare for the new funding audit and compliance requirements for your external audits, as well as potential areas that could be addressed during an OIG audit.

Many health centers had to shift their focus away from formal continuous quality improvement efforts in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. As we move into the next stage of the pandemic, health centers are refocusing on measures that impact their financial health such as high no-show rates and low productivity, while addressing profound burnout amongst staff members. This workshop will include a case study of one health center that reduced no-show rates by 47 percent across eight sites during COVID-19, addressed burnout through improved teamwork, and put a plan in place to sustain the operational improvements that were responsible for this change during the recovery phase of the pandemic. Attendees will learn tactics they can use to improve no-show rates, productivity, and staff satisfaction and will leave this session with both an understanding of the roadmap to success and concrete tactics that can be implemented immediately to improve operations.

Session presenters will share an empanelment policy and its procedural methodology as strategized by the interdisciplinary Patient Access Committee of Neighborhood Family Practice (NFP). Specific detail will reveal the formation of NFP’s ideal panel size through the collaboration of its departments of Human Resources, Finance, Operations, and Clinical Leadership. After exploring and determining useful appointment and patient metrics to confirm the validity of NFP’s model, further elaboration will detail the procedure designed to achieve and maintain an ideal patient panel. Finally, outlined will be the process which compares and evaluates each clinical care team’s current panel capacity with patient demand across each access point to assist future budget and staffing decisions.