Performance Improvement & Sustainability
MISSION
“To provide innovative solutions to behavioral health teams as they improve efficiencies and expand care pathways across social systems.”
The mission of SAE’s Performance Improvement & Sustainability (PI&S) focuses on the critical link between building integrated behavioral health assets to sustain care access points, reducing client barriers across the Social Determinants of Health, https://health.gov/healthypeople/priority-areas/social-determinants-health. Toward these ends, we have the strong experience in identifying root causes (financial, technological, personnel, procedural) of inefficiencies that can prevent timely access to care.
Operational efficiency is the capability of any organization to deliver service care, continuous improvement with accountability, and collaboration across the internal and external enterprise system. In the end, all activity intends to deliver services in the most efficient way possible.
The PI&S arm of SAE seeks to help you optimize efficiencies along with new and future changes in federal and state payment streams such as Medicaid and expansions to community-based programs, ensuring the ability to deliver care to clients facing life adversities impacting their Social Determinants of Health (SDOH). We work with our clients to apply structured methodologies across functions (case management, screening and referrals, crisis intervention) to reduce waste, increase efficiency, and streamline critical processes, with an eye toward upholding a team’s own approved and existing frameworks (Primary Care Behavioral Health Model, Patient Centered Medical Home, Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic, Other Integrated Behavioral Health approaches).
The figure below illustrates a transfer of learning that occurs when stakeholders tap into our extensive support repository. For example, involvement in the Community of Practice (CoP) exchanges and a focused consultation experience (left-hand side of graphic) may influence team performance and uptake of innovations (specific to team needs) in the host organizational settings.
ACTIONABLE KNOWLEDGE SOLUTIONS
📑 Read Dr. Julianne Manchester’s Issue Brief Community Resource Teams – Bridging The Gap Between Public Health and Behavioral Health
📑 Read Dr. Julianne Manchester’s Issue Brief Improving Community Based Behavioral Health Initiatives Through Participatory Implementation And Evaluation.
BUILDING A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE
PROVIDER LEARNING COLLABORATIVES – Join The Discussion, Learn From The Experts
SAE’s “Provider Learning Collaboratives” are an opportunity to convene around new industry information and best practices free of charge. We invite key experts to focus in on technical assistance and information dissemination specific to topics trending in the field, while holding space within which valuable discussions can arise. Together, we all benefit by being more alert and responsive to the latest changes in the behavioral and integrated health industry.
ACCESS LEARNING COLLABORATIVES
Optimizing Needs Assessments to Benefit Communities
- Performance Improvement and Sustainability in Behavioral Health
- Medication Assisted Treatment Programs For Opioid Use Disorder – Implications for Systems Change
- Accessing Strategic Planning, Technical Assistance and Training Opportunities for Rural Health Providers
Grant Readiness – Are You Ready For the 2023 Federal Grant Writing Season?
Understanding Care Coordination Within The CCBHC Model Of Care
Conducting And Utilizing Community Needs Assessments In Your CCBHC
FOCUSED CONSULTATIONS
Using our unique PI&S Consultation Protocol, SAE Consultants will collaborate with your behavioral health team to produce any of the following, depending on your organizational interests:
Learn to identify and collect data around key indicators, including criteria for the selection of good indicators, to demonstrate successful implementation and meeting of objectives.
Implement a vision for your community resource team, moving from Discover, Dream, Design, and Deploy (4-D Model) to sustain and optimize successes.
Move your community resource team through phases of Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control to improve efficiencies and eliminate eight sources of waste (Defects, Overproduction, Waiting, Non-Utilized Talent, Transportation, Inventory, Motion, Overprocessing).
Create a method, using sound data collection principles, to identify gaps in workflow processes to generate targeted solutions.
Identify the internal and external stakeholders critical for determining what works and what doesn’t. We’ll walk you through Plan (goal setting), Do (implementation, goal setting), Study (examine lessons learned and results), and Act (revise, change, sustain).
Narrow in and quantify the strongest contributors to inefficiencies (Pareto principle- 80% of the effects are caused by 20% of the problems.)
Determine the fidelity (integrity, comprehensiveness) of community resource team provider practices in accord with organizational guidelines (protocols, SoPs, clinical algorithms).
Optimize administrative oversight through mapping key and critical team processes necessary for effective care coordination and revenue cycle management.
Measure what your behavioral health program is producing in the short-term to modify and improve it for the long term and to highlight value-added services.
Dive in with stakeholders to explore the multi-factor causes of inefficiencies (time delays, redundancies, errors) and team performance gaps.
SAE recognizes an increased need for high level assessment, analysis, education, and recommendation regarding transition from fee-for-service to value-based payment models.
Financial sustainability requires fiscal viability planning. Our fiscal experts:
- Analyze each agency’s expenses to ensure the expense budget is as accurate as possible;
- Use a conservative approach to new business development to ensure that whenever possible, existing resources are utilized first; and
- Highlight hidden costs.
We ensure the provider achieves the financial plan it has developed through:
- Developing a comprehensive understanding of the provider’s current financial operations;
- Analyzing and recommending strategies for improving overall financial performance;
- Providing budget development support, including cost containment and rate modeling; and
- Conducting periodic reviews to measure progress in meeting established goals.
- Additionally, we offer specialized quantitative reports indicating when course corrections might be required; and
- We identify unanticipated growth opportunities.
Call For Building Team Capacity Column Entries
Success stories, new research, evidence-based practices, and lessons learned regarding performance improvement and sustainability are relevant to the work of community resource teams and other forms of integrated behavioral health care delivery.
Sample topics include:
- community-based program successes;
- collaborative data usage to revise programming with targeted groups;
- measuring fidelity of interdisciplinary team implementation;
- facilitating stakeholder engagement;
- coalition building;
- aspects of team building and maintenance;
- improving revenue streams through efficient team functioning; or
- observations of professional development outcomes in teams.
We’d love your ideas for additional topics!
The PI&S mission is to provide sound, valuable, usable, and objective information to support the behavioral health workforce and the provision of care. We reserve the right to reject submissions that are not relevant to the readership or are inappropriate in any way. Please edit for clarity, organization, and style prior to submission. Please note that product or service (consultation, books, fee-based resources, event appearances) promotion is not permitted. Evidence of promotion will lead to rejection of a submission.
- Column text should be submitted in Word (.docx);
- Preferred length: 900–1,500 words;
- Single-spaced type with 1-inch margins;
- Font: 12-point, Times New Roman;
- Please use this font for all material, including titles and subheadings;
- Submit ideas for column topics or your written columns in specific format here:
Schedule A Consultation
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SAE Behavioral Health Consulting enhances service provision that is integrated, accessible, data-driven, and person-centered.
