LINKAGE LAB COMMUNITY BASED ORGANIZATIONS
All of Linkage Lab’s first cohort served older adults in some way and sought relationships with medical payers and were willing to change their operations to achieve the goal. Linkage Lab provided training allowing each community based organization to critically examine its organizational structure and change to better align its organization with its goals. The program helped them critically analyze their organizations and restructure them to improve operations and refocus on services that were more needed in their service areas.
Linkage Lab is working with a second cohort and will release information about those organizations later.
» Bay Area Community Services in Oakland serves older adults and adults with mental illness, substance abuse problems or homelessness. In partnering with medical providers, the organization wanted to reduce its target audience’s 30-day hospital readmissions. Because of the Linkage Lab training and restructuring, Bay Area Community Services refocused on mental health services in all of its programming. It produced quantifiable outcomes for the first time, helping it
get certification through the Commis- sion on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Services. Bay Area Community Ser- vices eliminated programs that weren’t producing positive returns.
» Camarillo Health Care District in Camarillo provides services for adults, older adults, caregivers and children. It joined Linkage Lab to reduce hospital admissions for its target audience and to build relationships with other community based organizations — skilled nursing and other rehabilitation services — it hoped would also refer discharges, giving it the chance to help reduce hospital readmission rates. The district used money from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to launch a transitions program. It set criteria and to focus on priority opportunities, a task a Linkage Lab report labeled challenging.
» The Institute on Aging serves older adults, adults with disabilities and their caregivers in several California coun- ties: San Francisco, Marin, San Mateo and Santa Clara. It wanted to partner with health plans looking for partners to help reduce 30-day readmission rates. Linkage Lab helped the Institute
on Aging team set organizational objectives. The group implemented relationships with two medical payers. It also developed a new program, Community Care Settings Pilot, and partnered with another community based organization.
» Jewish Family Services of Los Angeles serves older adults and people with disabilities. Jewish Family Services wanted to better understand business relationships with medical entities, build its management team’s contract negotiation and business skills and to learn more about health care industry changes. It restructured its organization and implemented contracts with nine medical payers.
» Silicon Valley Independent Living Center is operated by and serves people with disabilities in Santa Clara County California. Silicon Valley Inde- pendent Living Center wanted relation- ships with health plans and to transition from long term care some potential clients who were eligible for Medicare and Medicaid. It subcontracted with other community based organizations. It implemented a contract with one health plan, but had difficulty getting referrals.
Continued from page 38
In the first cohort, the foundation worked with six Cal- ifornia organizations, spending $1 million, mostly on training. With the advent of accountable care organi- zations (ACOs, see page 7) and more stringent goals to reduce hospital readmissions, many nonprofits found themselves in similar positions to senior living commu- nities – ready and able to work with hospitals and other health care providers. San Diego-based St. Paul’s Senior Services was in Linkage
Lab’s charter class. When The SCAN Foundation initially contacted the 56-year-old nonprofit about working with Linkage Lab, CEO Cheryl Wilson was skeptical, especially when she learned her executive team would need to be away from the office every other month for two-day trainings. “I just thought we’ve got so much going on, I don’t
think we can do this,” Wilson said. But St. Paul’s ap- plied, joined the program and found the training intro- duced the organization to new ways of doing business. “After the first meeting, we all agreed unanimously that was going to be a great program, and we were
40 SENIOR LIVING EXECUTIVE / JULY/AUGUST 2016
going to have to think differently about things,” Wilson said. “It wasn’t a basic nuts and bolts about how to do a budget. This was a vision, looking at things in a new way. How can you look at things that have never been done and still make a budget for that kind of out-of- the-box thinking?” Consultants visited their sites and were constructive
in their advice to St. Paul’s, which provides home, res- idential, Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) and day services for older adults. “They were excellent, not demanding, not preachy, but just helping us explore was very helpful” Wilson said. “We came away with a lot of different action items,
one being a leadership academy for our staff,” Wilson said, noting the training for leaders and managers that helped some move to higher-ranking positions in their organization or to other groups. Ultimately, St. Paul’s reorganized staff, examining processes, people and in- frastructure to see where it could improve operations. Continued on page 42
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