Iowa Health Home Facilitates Coordinated Care with Netsmart CareManager™

Health Homes and other care coordination organizations are emerging as key vehicles for delivering integrated care and are a key part of the healthcare transformation under the Affordable Care Act. Netsmart is the leading provider of care management solutions for these coordinated care entities and for health and human services organizations nationwide.

Health Homes, ACOs, and Dual Eligibles programs are comprised of teams of healthcare professionals responsible for coordinating care across multiple providers. By integrating primary care and behavioral health, and coordinating care regardless of where patients receive it, these entities are designed to help improve quality of care and health outcomes, while bending the cost curve in the U.S.

Youth Emergency Services & Shelter (YESS, Iowa’s largest children’s welfare emergency shelter, chose Netsmart’s CareManager™ solution when it partnered with Magellan Behavioral Care of Iowa to create one of the first Pediatric Integrated Health Homes for more than 1,200 children and youth, many of whom are engaged in multiple components of the juvenile justice and child welfare system in Iowa. These children and youth will have their primary care and behavioral health coordinated by a care manager to ensure that all needed treatments are received and outcomes are improving.

Care managers involved in the YESS-facilitated Health Home will use Netsmart CareManager to develop a care plan that can be shared among providers and electronically send out referrals to those that can receive them in that fashion. Netsmart CareManager provides comprehensive views of authorized Electronic Health Record (EHR) data for both primary and behavioral care. This complete information enables more informed diagnoses and treatment plans and more effective ongoing case management. CareManager also facilitates authorizations and claims, notifications and alerts, and tracks clinical quality measures and outcomes.

“The two major challenges to providing coordinated care are ensuring that all providers see the same care plan and understand what care other clinicians are providing to a consumer.” said Stephen Quirk, executive director, YESS. “By partnering with Magellan and Netsmart, we are taking a progressive approach to addressing those challenges while providing whole-person care across primary, behavioral and social services. This partnership also helps us meet the financial and performance expectations that facilitate our funding.”

Netsmart CareManager enables the YESS Health Home to:

• Provide an accessible, single point of healthcare and social services coordination for children and youth

• Ensure individuals and their families have access to timely, quality and appropriate services

• Involve multiple organizations and their partners to provide needed services and support

• Share authorized clinical and other information to enable coordinated, integrated care

• Meet financial and performance expectations and accountabilities to enable continued funding

“Our goal with the Health Home is to provide transformative, coordinated care,” said Quirk. “Netsmart’s CareManager solution has enabled us to do that and more. It provides us the ability to better track our interactions with youth and families, chart outcomes, calculate cost containment, monitor performance; and evaluate the costs and benefits of offering alternative services and programming.”

As the selected technology partner for Health Homes in states across the country, including Tennessee, Ohio, Washington and New York, Netsmart is fully engaged in shaping the future of this rapidly-evolving area of healthcare.

“YESS is a good example of behavioral health’s ability to lead the cross-organizational care facilitated by Health Homes,” said Michael Valentine, chief executive officer, Netsmart. “On a larger scale, we continue to proactively work with our clients, industry associations and market leaders to define the care coordination landscape.”

For more information about Netsmart and Health Homes, visit www.ntst.com/healthhomes or call Netsmart at 1-800-472-5509.

About Netsmart
Netsmart is committed to helping health and human services providers deliver effective, recovery-based care with Netsmart CareFabric™, a tightly woven framework of innovative clinical and business solutions and services that supports integrated, coordinated delivery of health services across the spectrum of care.

More than 22,000 client organizations, including 350,000 care providers and more than 40 state systems use Netsmart products to help improve the quality of life for tens of millions of people each year. Netsmart clients include mental health and substance use treatment agencies, psychiatric hospitals, private and group mental health practices, public health departments, social services and child and family health agencies, vital records offices, and managed care organizations.

Netsmart is pleased to support the EveryDay Matters Foundation, which was established for behavioral and public health organizations to learn from each other and share their causes and stories. Organizations can also request grants for their cause or to help fund technology that advances the way care is delivered. For more information, visit www.everydaymatters.com/foundation.

Learn more about how Netsmart and CareFabric are changing the face of healthcare today. Visit www.ntst.com, call 1-800-472-5509, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook or visit us on YouTube.

CareManager and CareFabric are trademarks of Netsmart Technologies, Inc.