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MEALS ON WHEELS AMERICA RESEARCH

REPORT EXPLORES PARTNERSHIPS BETWEEN COMMUNITY-BASED ORGANIZATIONS 
AND HEALTHCARE ENTITIES USING
OUTCOMES-BASED FINANCING

 
Building on the movement to value-based care, Meals on Wheels America has made a concerted effort to open doors to better integrate community-based senior nutrition program services with traditional healthcare delivery. A new initiative with a large healthcare company via its national Medicare Advantage (MA) plan presented an opportunity for Meals on Wheels to scale service delivery to homebound seniors and for the MA plan to develop a new home-delivered meal benefit in conjunction with other supportive services for its enrollees. Effective Partnerships Between Community-Based Organizations and Healthcare: A Possible Path to Sustainability is a report that follows that initiative and explores how community-based organizations (CBOs) can work effectively with health plans to scale their services through outcomes-based financing, such as Pay for Success (PFS).

EFFECTIVE PARTNERSHIPS BETWEEN
COMMUNITY-BASED ORGANIZATIONS AND HEALTHCARE: 
A POSSIBLE PATH TO SUSTAINABILITY


RELEASED FEBRUARY 2019

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Meals on Wheels America and its partner, Quantified Ventures, embarked on a new initiative with a large healthcare company via its national Medicare Advantage (MA) plan. The initiative presented the opportunity for Meals on Wheels America to scale its network’s service delivery to homebound seniors, and for the MA plan to develop a new home-delivered meal benefit in conjunction with other supportive services for its enrollees. The intervention delivered through this innovative partnership was to be financed through a Pay for Success (PFS) transaction – an outcomes-based financing model; however, several practical challenges emerged as the involved partners worked through key steps in the deal development process. Ultimately, the MA plan decided to finance the project through a direct contract rather than with PFS. Despite the change in payment mechanism, several key learnings surfaced during this effort that may influence the ability of other community-based organizations (CBOs) to effectively partner with health plans or health systems to finance innovation and enhanced service delivery are explored in Effective Partnerships Between Community-Based Organizations and Healthcare: A Possible Path to Sustainability. This report:

  • Synthesizes key learnings from a first-in-kind attempt to develop a PFS project between a MA plan and Meals on Wheels;
  • Looks into ways to break down barriers that CBOs face in partnering with healthcare entities;
  • Examines important characteristics that should be assessed prior to partnering with a health plan or system, including organizational size, readiness and sophistication; and
  • Discusses how MA plans can creatively finance initiatives focused on prevention and addressing social determinants of health.

Download the Executive Summary        Download the Full Report

This report is intended to be disseminated freely. In reproducing any excerpts of this report, please provide a credit, such as: “Effective Partnerships Between Community-Based Organizations and Healthcare: A Possible Path to Sustainability was prepared by Meals on Wheels America and Quantified Ventures, and developed with the support of Nonprofit Finance Fund’s Pay for Success Initiative and the funding awarded between 2015 and 2017 by The Social Innovation Fund. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of Meals on Wheels America.”