Improving Health Home Capacity to Serve Homeless Clients

Grantee Name

Corporation for Supportive Housing

Funding Area

Special Projects Fund

Publication Date

March 2017

Grant Amount

$95,000

Grant Date:

October 2013 – September 2014

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The Affordable Care Act gave states the option to provide coordinated services for Medicaid patients with multiple chronic conditions through “health homes”—networks of providers across communities that facilitate access to various medical, behavioral, and social services.

Health homes have the potential to reorganize how care is delivered, managed, and coordinated for high-need and high-cost patients, which in turn could lead to lower emergency room use; reductions in hospital admissions and readmissions; reductions in higher health care costs; and improved quality of care. However, health home patients who are unstably housed often cycle through emergency rooms, detox facilities, hospitalizations, and shelters, resulting in enormous costs and poor health outcomes.

To address this issue, NYHealth awarded Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) a grant to improve coordination of care for health home patients with the supportive housing sector.

Outcomes and Lessons Learned

Worked with more than 50 health homes and supportive housing partners to support and promote the adoption of collaborative supportive housing models;
Developed a training curriculum for health homes with information regarding ideal candidates for each type of housing option, eligibility, and access to supportive housing;
Provided in-person trainings based on the curriculum, which reached State and local government representatives from all 62 counties and housing, care management, and service providers (including all 48 health homes in the State);
Developed pre- and post-training surveys to assess a baseline understanding of supportive housing and the level of usefulness of CSH’s training curriculum (of which 75% of participants completed the post-training surveys and 98% of those surveyed found the trainings useful for their work);
Delivered webinars on emerging best practices in housing and health home care coordination; and
Published an article, “Bringing Housing to Scale: A Study on the Housing Needs of Bronx Frequent Users,” in Behavioral Health News, a publication that reaches 160,000 readers across the country.

CSH initially planned to convene in-person follow-up training sessions as an opportunity for health home and supportive housing providers to share best practices that have been implemented since the initial trainings. However, unforeseen challenges, such as coordination issues among State agencies, led CSH to convene follow-up webinars instead. By conducting webinars rather than in-person trainings, CSH was able to reach a wider audience of new stakeholders.

Co-Funding and Additional Funds Leveraged: CSH leveraged NYHealth’s support for this project to secure funding from NYC Health + Hospitals for additional training sessions ($24,000). In addition, of the 10 health home providers that were awarded funding in 2014 through the New York State Medicaid Redesign Team’s Supportive Housing Health Home Pilot Project ($4 million total; up to $400,000 per organization), 8 had participated in CSH’s trainings.

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Improving Health Home Capacity to Serve Homeless Clients

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The Affordable Care Act gave states the option to provide coordinated services for Medicaid patients with multiple chronic conditions through “health homes”—networks of providers across communities that facilitate access to various medical, behavioral, and social services.

Outcomes and Lessons Learned

Related Links

Informing Supportive Housing Decisions in New York State

Identifying Strategies for Supportive Housing