Deaths from suicide, alcohol, and drugs, or what some call "deaths of despair," have increased by 51% from 2005 to 2016. This blog post in Health Affairs describes three key state policy levers to combat the nation’s mental health crisis: expand Medicaid coverage, ensure full implementation of parity laws, and address payment and capacity challenges in the behavioral health workforce.
The Delta Center team recently spoke with Andrea Ducas, a Senior Program Officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, about strategies for nonprofits to use in working with foundations.
A new blog illustrates five key insights related to program design and evaluation from the productive partnership between the Partnership HealthPlan of California and local community health centers to create a care coordination (CCM) program.
The Delta Center convened grantees from 12 states at our fourth convening for state primary care associations and behavioral health state associations in Princeton, NJ, in October 2019. Grantees discussed successes, challenges and innovations in adopting value-based payment and care.
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.
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.
