August 2, 2022 – CommonSpirit Health has announced that the health system has joined the Partnership to Align Social Care – A National Learning and Action Network (Partnership), the first initiative to bring together community-based organizations, health plans, health systems, national associations, and federal agencies to co-design a national framework to advance social care delivery and improve health equity. To further support this effort, CommonSpirit has provided a $100k grant to the Partnership to Align Social Care, which has also received funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Elevance Health, Kaiser Permanente, United HealthCare, and the Archstone Foundation.
Research shows that aligning health care with organizations that connect people to community resources–childcare, jobs, housing, nutrition, and transportation–measurably improves the overall health of the population and can impact up to 80 percent of health outcomes. The Partnership to Align Social Care was established to help create efficient networks that share information, are owned by the community, and supported by all the agencies, institutions, and businesses that are involved in improving health.
Founding organizations include health plans such as Aetna CVS Health, Elevance Health, Humana and United Healthcare; integrated delivery networks such as Kaiser Permanente; health systems including CommonSpirit and Rush University Medical Center; community-based organization (CBO) networks including the Detroit Agency on Aging, Partners in Care Foundation, and the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers. Liaisons from several federal agencies including the Administration for Community Living (ACL), the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) advise this effort.
Through the Partnership, organizations that may not typically work together have established a forum to create a framework that will build and sustain the capacity of CBO networks to provide social services. The Partnership will focus on priority issues including:
- Co-designing common standards for effective and sustainable partnerships of CBO networks, health plans, and health systems
- Identifying core attributes and competencies for CBO network credentialing
- Identifying/encouraging widespread use of existing billing codes and essential elements for a streamlined contracting process between health systems, health plans, and CBOs
- Making recommendations for infrastructure capabilities and financing for more sustainable CBO networks