Engaging Partners
FHC consultants support clients in using data to engage
partners, work toward shared goals and measure progress.
Supporting Employers in Achieving High-Value Health Care
FHC consultants bring decades of experience working with health care purchasers to understand and act on variations in value.
Here’s a recent example. A state is looking to increase adoption of Value Based Insurance Design (VBID) programs among employers to improve residents’ health outcomes while reducing unnecessary and potentially harmful healthcare utilization and spending.
FHC has facilitated an employer-led consortium; disseminated best practices; assessed VBID programs locally and nationally; recommended the most appropriate VBID models for various employer groups and health plans; and created an employer-facing VBID Tool Kit and targeted communication materials.
Creating Communities of Engaged Consumers
Changing the culture of health and health care requires new ways of connecting with consumers. With experience on a wide array of consumer engagement projects, FHC consultants bring lessons learned and fresh thinking.
One FHC client was looking to direct residents to more high-value services and providers. FHC supported the state in developing a continuing medical education program to assist medical professionals in discussing lower cost options for treating lower back pain.
FHC also provides project management services to help the state develop a consumer-facing website that discusses the risks and costs of potentially-avoidable complications.
Facilitating Multi-Stakeholder Projects
The problems in health care are too complex for any one stakeholder to solve alone. Yet, market dynamics can make collaboration challenging.
FHC consultants have experience bringing together physicians, provider systems, government agencies, employers, health plans, non-profit organizations and others. They know how to facilitate the difficult conversations, find shared pain points and develop collaborative, effective approaches to addressing them.
Marketing and Communications Support
FHC consultants bring experience building communications campaigns to diverse audiences, gaining positive attention from social and traditional media and developing interactive tools to share information.
FHC supports clients in refining their messaging and in developing the specific strategies to effectively share it. FHC consultants also support clients in developing the branding, websites and materials to inform and persuade audiences.
FHC's Primary Care Investment and Transformation Projects
In 2020, FHC led efforts to design new models of primary care investment and delivery to help states drive towards the Triple Aim while increasing providers’ joy in practice and working to eliminate health disparities.
FHC supports states and non-profits at various stages of their work to redesign how primary care is funded and delivered, ranging from measuring primary care investment today and setting targets for the future to synthesizing the literature and real-life lessons learned to create roadmaps for care delivery transformation. In this work, FHC keeps a constant eye on affordability, pairing increases in primary care investment with policies to decrease healthcare costs elsewhere.
- In Delaware, FHC manages the Office of Value Based Health Care Delivery under the leadership of Delaware’s Department of Insurance. The Office is charged with developing Affordability Standards and targets for carrier investment in primary care. FHC worked with payers, providers, hospital systems, actuaries, and national experts to develop multi-year standards and targets for primary care investment, unit price growth and alternative payment model adoption that align with the state’s ongoing health transformation efforts. As part of this work, the Office recently released Delaware Health Care Affordability Standards: An Integrated Approach to Improve Access, Quality and Value, which includes plans to more than double primary care spending in the commercial fully-insured market by 2025.
- In Connecticut, FHC led an extensive stakeholder engagement process focused on developing evidence-based recommendations for expanding primary care services and effective reimbursement models. FHC also led the conceptual design of a monitoring system to ensure that increased primary care investments generate sustainable reductions in total cost of care. With advice from a team of expert national and regional advisors, FHC represented the state in meetings with more than 600 individuals, facilitated multiple multi-stakeholder committees, and provided a robust actuarial analysis of the net savings that could be expected from investments in specific primary care services.
- In Rhode Island, FHC worked with the Care Transformation Collaborative of Rhode Island (CTC-RI) to support practices as they begin a journey to comprehensive primary care capitation. In partnership with CTC-RI, FHC joined a team of experts convened to facilitate a learning collaborative of physician leaders from medical groups and health insurers as they identified the core elements of primary care delivery necessary to succeed under this new model of care. In its role, FHC developed a guide to best practices in primary care delivery, developed and administered an online capitation readiness practice self-assessment and provided individual technical assistance.
In Delaware, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, FHC used APCDs and other data sources to support states in measuring primary care investment. In Delaware, this work included guiding stakeholders in developing a definition of primary care investment that includes non-fee-for-service payments.