Our Take on Integrating with Community Based Organizations
Evidence supporting the role of community in health outcomes is mounting. Alone, health systems can only do so much - transformative impact depends on collaborative partnerships with community-based organizations (CBOs). Connecting your health system to community-based efforts is now more possible and more imperative than ever. In an age of increasing disparity in both rural and urban access to even the foundational physiological needs of safe food, water, and shelter, the time for systemic changes in our approach is now.
Of course, if true collaboration were simple, it would have already happened. No one denies the challenging road ahead. The complexity stretches across scope and focus, bandwidth and resource alignment, shared vision and accountability. And, if you are like most health systems, you have a varied track record when stretching beyond your walls. It’s time to truly fulfill the opportunities of value-based healthcare and build your reputation as an integral member of health improvement partnerships.
As a health system, you bring valuable strengths to the table. Fluent in regulatory reporting and health data management, your world-class IT infrastructure is game-changing for CBOs. Your success in managing and executing a data-driven collaboration assures your ability to continue to support CBOs further in their initiatives. Beyond data enabling a more stable footing in fulfilling their mission, CBOs benefit from rich data insights that empower their efforts to better quantify, measure, and expand outreach.
Meanwhile, CBO collaboration opens many doors for health systems. Sharing the perspective of ‘No Outcome, No Income’, you recognize that managing health across populations is the path not only to improved health for your patients, but also for more stable reimbursements that can fuel your work further. Through deep community engagement, health systems can go beyond guesswork to understand their impacts with clarity. From expanding your organization’s impact to myriad post-acute needs such as appointment transportation and access to prescriptions to impacting long-term SDoH such as housing, nutrition, and mental health from a peer-group perspective, CBO support can mean all the difference for a patient on the tipping point.
At Downshift, our experience with community health partnerships enabled by tools such as Epic’s Healthy Planet and Healthy Planet Link, partnerships with the latest developers of SDoH apps, and integration via APIs or data aggregation means we’ve worked through the challenges to design a system that truly improves transparency for every collaborator.
This complexity doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Stop spinning your wheels. With Downshift by your side, you will not only tighten the course for your immediate collaboration efforts, you’ll build the foundation to develop and manage future partnerships with consistency and focus. Start with one and scale to many with Downshift. Anticipate the curves and rise to the challenge. Are you ready?
