AF4Q Featured in Center for Health Care Strategies, Inc. Blog Post

Aligning Forces was recently featured in a Center for Health Care Strategies, Inc. (CHCS) blog post about Alliances’ unique ability to take advantage of State Innovation Model (SIM) grants. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) recently announced Round Two of the SIM Initiative, and the participating awardees will engage a wide set of partners to support their ambitious goals for statewide multi-payer delivery system and payment reform. According to the blog post, “given their track record since 2006 for improving community health and health care quality in states across the country, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q) regional alliances are uniquely positioned to support SIM states’ efforts to transform their delivery systems and offer lessons for other regional efforts.”

CHCS identified future opportunities for state-Alliance Partnerships to achieve SIM grant goals, including:

• As regional conveners and engagement facilitators, regional alliances can help states bring together diverse partners, including multi-payer stakeholders, in a neutral way to develop collaborative solutions to improve health care delivery.
• As data service providers, regional alliances can support state efforts with data identification, research, aggregation, validation, and analysis to support health improvement efforts. State-alliance partnerships can provide comparable support to providers.
• In defining a sustainability model, alliances can serve as capacity builders to maximize the states’ resources and the potential to sustain results across regions beyond the SIM award period.
• In developing and operationalizing innovation and other deliverables, alliances can support risk mitigation strategies and efforts to support practice transformation support.

According to the post, “state-alliance partnerships, such as those achieved through AF4Q, offer models that other states can look to in engaging partners and accelerating SIM efforts nationally.”