Infrastructure and Spread Track

Made possible by the California Health Care Foundation.

 

Structure and Core Content

The Infrastructure and Spread track is available to up to 30 health care safety net practices. This track will provide funding to organizations interested in building their infrastructure for telehealth. Selected organizations will have the option to learn about best practices through CCI open webinars, the CCI Academy, and online tools and resources.

Each organization selected for the Infrastructure and Spread track should expect to make the following commitments over this 12-month program:

  • Identify a team lead that will be responsible for managing the virtual care efforts at their organization.
  • Collecting and submitting quarterly on a standardized set of measures, as well as contributing to sharing stories about the impact of the work.
  • Participate in qualitative interviews with the evaluation team, as needed.

Selected organizations have the option to participate in additional CCI webinars and peer-sharing conversations to advance the implementation of virtual care.

Who’s Eligible?

We’re looking for safety net health care organizations that provide comprehensive primary care services primarily to a substantial percentage of Medi-Cal and uninsured patients. Our goal is to select organizations from across California with the goal of achieving geographic diversity and reaching communities most vulnerable to COVID-19 and may benefit from additional support.

Eligible organizations include:

  • Federally qualified health centers (FQHC) and FQHC look-alikes
  • Community clinics, rural health clinics, and free clinics
  • Ambulatory care clinics owned and operated by public hospitals
  • Indian Health Service clinics
  • Independent provider care practices

Eligible organizations must meet the following criteria:

  • Providers actively use an EMR system.
  • The organization serves at least 8,000 unduplicated patients.
  • To achieve the program’s goal of reaching Medi-Cal and uninsured patients, with a particular emphasis on serving non-white patients known to be more affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, eligible organizations can meet any one of the follow three criteria:
    • Patient population is at least 70 percent Medi-Cal and/or uninsured
    • Patient population is at least 40 percent Medi-Cal and/or uninsured, as well as 20 percent Black
    • Patient population is at least 40 percent Medi-Cal and/or uninsured, as well as 70 percent non-white

If your organization does not meet the above criteria but serves a traditionally hard-to-reach or marginalized community, you may still apply as an exception. Please review the narrative questions for more details.

Given the program goal of equitably expanding statewide access to virtual care delivery, organizations that have already received telehealth grant funding from HealthNet in the last four months are not eligible to apply.

Statewide associations and regional clinic consortia are also not eligible to apply.

What Makes a Strong Applicant?

  1. High Proportion of Medi-Cal or Uninsured Patients: Successful applicants will meet the eligibility requirements; preference will be given to organizations that serve an even higher proportion that the minimums described above.
  2. Organization Serves a Unique Population or Need in Their Community: Preference will be given to organizations that provide needed care for a greater share of patients of color in their community and/or non-English speaking groups.
  3. Data and IT Systems in Place: Successful applicants will have basic data and IT systems in place with the ability to track patient-level data. Data reporting for this program will build upon existing standard data collection reports.

Our Expectations

This track is intended to be flexible to the needs of participants, so we encourage each organization to leverage the offerings by committing to the following:

  1. Data Reporting and Evaluation Activities:  Teams are expected to work closely with an external evaluator to collect and submit data at the beginning, mid-point and end of the program on a standardized set of measures, as well as progress reports to share stories about the impact of the work. This program will ensure essential data is collected to advocate for more permanent policy changes to sustain telehealth into the future.
    1. (See Appendix A for a current draft description of the measures.) The finalized definitions of program measures, including detailed specifications, will be shared during the accelerator’s kickoff webinar. The evaluation team will work with individual organizations about how best to pull and report data.
  2. Patient and Community Involvement: Successful organizations will involve patients’ and community members’ perspectives and experiences in plans to implement virtual care services, taking into account disparities in virtual care access across certain patient populations.
  3. Participation in Program Activities: Organizations are encouraged to participate in ongoing webinars and discussions in the CCI Academy. These resources are not required for selected participants. Organizations may be asked to share lessons learned by presenting examples of their project successes and challenges with the larger program.

How to Apply

Step 1: Watch THE Informational Webinar (Optional)

Register for our Informational Webinar on Tuesday, June 9th at 1:00 pm to hear a more detailed description of the program and listen to some questions and answers.

Step 2: Apply Online

Your proposal and budget must be submitted online by Friday, June 19, 2020 by 5:00 pm.

Applications should include the following:

  1. Application Submission Form 
  2. Application Narrative: Includes responses to the five questions listed below.
  3. Budget Template
  4. Tax Status Documentation

Application Narrative Questions

Please limit your entire response to a maximum of three pages, using at least 11-point font and 1-inch margins.

  1. Overall Goals: Why is your organization interested in participating in this program? How do you intend to use the grant funds?
  2. Virtual Care Delivery Experience: What virtual care delivery tools have you started using since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., phone visits, video visits, patient portal, text messaging, etc.)?
  3. Participation: Who in your organization is leading your telehealth infrastructure efforts? What is their role and how do you intend to spread learnings and practices within your organization?
  4. Data Reporting Capabilities: Please describe your current ability to collect and report on patient-level data regarding visit modality (i.e., in-person, phone, video).  Please describe how you would collect data quarterly by visit type and if you could report this data by race/ethnicity?
  5. For organizations that do not meet all of the outlined criteria and serve traditionally hard-to-reach or marginalized communities (250 words or less): Please describe the community your organization uniquely serves and how they and your organization is being affected by COVID-19. Include details about which criteria your organization does not meet and why (e.g., this practice has two full-time providers that serve 6,000 patients total). We will only select participants from this group if we are unable to achieve our health equity goals from applicants who meet the full criteria.

Connected Care Accelerator Infrastructure & Spread Application Submission Form

Sorry, this form is not available.

Next Steps

CCI and CHCF will review applications. Our intent is to select a group of up to 30 safety net health care organizations interested in building their infrastructure for telehealth and virtual care. The accelerator acceptances will be announced via email by Wednesday, July 15, 2020.

 

Download RFA as PDF

Review the Frequently Asked Questions