Aug 9, 2024
Empowering Community Care with Blooming Health: Your Engagement and Screening Solution for 1115 Medicaid Waiver
As New York implements the 1115 Health Equity Reform Waiver, Social Care Networks (SCNs) are required to meet guidelines for screening New York state Medicaid members for different categories of Social Health needs, helping patients with navigating and addressing their social care needs, which would result in enhancing health equity across the state. This implementation entails a significant level of engagement with millions of Medicaid members and screening them for different social needs, before helping them with interventions such as nutritional meals, housing supports, transportation and other social services that can have a significant impact on an individual’s health.
At Blooming Health, our vision has always been to empower Community Based Organizations (CBOs) in providing better social care to underserved populations. Our platform is designed to enhance community member engagement, screen members for health-related social needs, and connect them with needed resources. We have been working with and learning from hundreds of CBOs/Community Programs across New York state over the past 4 years.
Trust, Inclusivity, and Ease of Use: Leveraging Blooming Health for Community Engagement
Blooming Health offers a comprehensive platform tailored to the needs of community care providers such as SCNs and CBOs. We focus on the key challenges community care providers face in engaging and screening member populations at scale:
Making sure the members trust the engagement method (e.g. the phone call or text message they receive via our platform through white labeling to the CBO’s brand)
Making sure no one is left behind by providing engagements across different communication channels such as phone calls, text messages, and emails and offering them in 80+ different languages. No member should be left behind, no matter whether they have access to the internet or whether they can speak English or not.
Understanding the resource and operational limitations on CBOs/SCNs side and automating the process of educating and informing members, screening them, and helping them navigate the needs detected until they are addressed comprehensively. Doing all this, while making sure there is a secure integration with the rest of SCNs’/CBOs’ IT infrastructures to reduce any redundancy in the work the staff need to do.
By addressing barriers such as trust, language, technology and staff capacity, we empower SCNs and CBOs to deliver on their promise in serving Medicaid members.
Educating Large Communities
Health education is critical for community well-being, especially when new programs like 1115 waiver are rolling out in new communities. With Blooming Health, you can send targeted messages to educate your community on important health topics, set expectations for upcoming screeners, and help members navigate their social needs. Our platform has been successfully used for campaigns on vaccinations, housing, nutritional services, benefits enrollment, and wellness programs. By keeping your community informed, through messages tailored to each cohort of the population, you can ensure a more smooth rollout of screening operations for different social needs.
Screening for Needs
In advancing health equity, Blooming Health’s screening tools enable providers to detect issues such as food insecurity, mobility and transportation needs, housing needs, loneliness, and healthcare access. Our platform collects and analyzes data, allowing your SCN to make informed decisions and provide timely interventions while staying compliant with the New York state requirements for screening implementation. Our platform can securely ingest data on millions of patients, enable you to automatically screen them in their language of choice and communication channel of choice with standardized screening instruments e.g. AHC Health Related Social Needs Screening Tool, and collect data in real time.
Success stories from our users demonstrate significant improvements in addressing social determinants of health through effective screening.
Raising Awareness about the 1115 Waiver Rollout
A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 62% of Medicaid beneficiaries were unaware that Medicaid covers non-emergency medical transportation. Additionally, a 2018 Health Affairs study reported that many beneficiaries were unaware of benefits like dental care and preventive services, which leads to underutilization of these services. Improving education and outreach is critical to ensuring beneficiaries fully access the care they are entitled to. Blooming Health ensures your community stays informed about available services and emergency alerts. Our multi-channel communication approach ensures wide reach and accessibility, helping to bridge gaps in healthcare access.
As we partner with SCNs across New York, we plan to support their implementation of the 1115 Waiver through:
Creating awareness around the 1115 rollout with personalized messages relevant to each sub-cohort of populations and aligned with their potential needs
Automating the process of real-time screening at scale - through phone calls, text messages, and emails and in 80 different languages without the need for the SCN to have staff speaking in those languages
Providing data-dashboards on engagements and screening results to create more visibility on the outcomes for SCNs’ and CBOs’ staff members and leadership
Integrating with relevant databases to facilitate screening data reporting
Bonus: Automating referrals resulted from screening data to the relevant CBOs that can address a certain category of need
Data Security
Blooming Health offers advanced technology that ensures secure and efficient data management. Our platform supports social care referrals, enables reimbursements for CBOs, and tracks outcomes. This comprehensive data is essential for NYS DOH and CMS to evaluate the waiver’s impact. Our platform meets HIPAA standards, ensuring the privacy and security of all data. This commitment to data security builds trust and ensures compliance with regulatory requirements.
Blooming Health’s Impact in New York State
Blooming Health's platform has achieved significant success across New York State. Currently being utilized in over 33 counties, we serve over 114,000 New Yorkers. Over 4.6 million messages have been sent using our platform, and in the past year alone, over 793 surveys and screeners have been deployed, achieving an impressive average response rate of 35%.
Mark Jennings, Executive Director, Project FIND: Before settling on the Blooming Health platform, I tried multiple systems to help improve communication with program participants. Nothing else compares. As a technology, Blooming Health has provided Project FIND with a robust tool to communicate more effectively with our housing tenants and social service program participants.
Lucia Esposito, Aging Services Program Coordinator, Broome County Office for Aging: Using Blooming Health, the percentage of respondents categorized as lonely decreased from 43% to 33% between March and November 2023.
May Bryan, Caregiver Support Specialist, WellMed Charitable Foundation: Caregiver S.O.S. has been utilizing Blooming Health for over a year now and it h as made communication more effective and has significantly improved my time management.
Call to Action
For more information, contact us at team@gobloominghealth.com or visit www.gobloominghealth.com. Discover how Blooming Health can revolutionize your community engagement and support your mission to improve health outcomes.
