Seizing Healthcare Funding Opportunities for Asthma Interventions
As the interest among stakeholders in data demonstrating the health and cost-savings benefits from in-home asthma resident education and housing interventions is mounting around the country, GHHI is helping local and state governments, healthcare organizations, housing providers and community agencies take advantage of these opportunities to pursue prevention funding for their communities.
GHHI provides training and technical assistance in the development of strategies to access Medicaid, private insurer and social impact investment to pay for in-home asthma resident education and Healthy Homes housing interventions to reduce asthma triggers. GHHI offers customized Pathways to Healthcare training sessions, including instruction on the GHHI comprehensive service model, asthma home intervention and education best practices, asthma social impact bonds planning, other financing tools, public and private healthcare reimbursement, healthy homes and more. Other sample training topics include:
- How to pursue effective healthcare funding strategies
- Medicaid rule changes
- Medicaid waivers
- Examples of healthy homes reimbursement currently in practice
- Opportunities through managed care organizations
- State Innovation Models overview
- ACA’s changes in hospital community benefit investment rules
- ACS’s hospital readmission reduction program
- Best practices on engaging state Medicaid offices and hospitals
- Integrated GHHI service delivery model
As an example of our customizable trainings, here’s a look at a recent training GHHI conducted for the State of Vermont by Vice President of Policy and Innovation Michael McKnight:
Organized and sponsored by the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board (VHCB), more than 40 individuals from across the state attended, including staff from the state health department, hospitals, accountable care organizations, the state innovation model program funded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, the weatherization and lead poisoning prevention programs, as well as home visiting and asthma management programs. The training explored how Vermont housing programs and their related services can be more closely tied to clinical services. It included an in depth look at existing opportunities to incorporate health-related funding into a comprehensive model that includes home interventions.
Participants also reviewed the evidence of the effectiveness of healthy homes and weatherization interventions, the importance of the home environment to patient health, and how much of a business case already exists for integrating these two fields. Attendees then discussed the current Vermont healthy homes, lead poisoning prevention and weatherization work, and the potential for coordinated service delivery.
Mr. McKnight reviewed all of the available pathways to incorporating health related payment and reimbursement streams for home interventions and discussed with participants the Vermont healthcare landscape, including ongoing programs addressing asthma and efforts to reduce the homeless population by paying for housing through healthcare streams. (The state of Vermont is very focused on the triple aim of improving the quality of care delivered to patients, improving population health and reducing healthcare costs. Incorporating home education and interventions was viewed as an opportunity to reach all of these aims.)
This training, as well as others on a variety of green and healthy housing topics is available through GHHI’s Client Services Division for communities both in and out of the GHHI network. If you are interested in scheduling a Pathways to Healthcare training or learning more about other GHHI training options, please contact me at gwstewart@ghhi.org or 410-534-6447 ext. 130.