The Human Service Organization Network recently formed to deliver services regionally for the Healthy Opportunities Pilot, officials announced.
 
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services created the Healthy Opportunities Pilot program as part of North Carolina’s Medicaid transformation. It is intended, according to a news release, to “test and evaluate the impact of providing nonmedical interventions related to food, housing, transportation and toxic stress, to high-needs Medicaid beneficiaries,” often described as social determinants of health that can play a role in patients’ health outcomes.
 
Community Care of the Lower Cape Fear was one of three network leads picked to pilot the program and will work in Bladen, Columbus, Pender, Onslow, Brunswick and New Hanover counties.
 
The newly assembled network of human service organizations chosen through an application and assessment process to work on the pilot includes 29 nonmedical services designed to reduce health care costs and improve health outcomes, according to the release from Community Care of the Lower Cape Fear.
 
Examples of those network groups are Cape Fear Habitat for Humanity, Disability Resource Center and Legal Aid of North Carolina.
 
“The network [human service organizations] will receive referrals from NC Medicaid Managed Care Health Plans and other entities approved for the pilot, deliver the services to those individuals, and be reimbursed for a fee associated with the type of service,” the release stated. “Data will be collected to evaluate the effectiveness of the interventions and learn if this model, partnering HSOs with health care payers and providers, is sustainable and scalable for the Medicaid program statewide.”
 
If the Healthy Opportunities Pilot is shown to be effective, the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services will explore integrating these nonmedical interventions statewide for Medicaid beneficiaries, officials said, “creating a perpetual funding stream to eliminate SDOH barriers that could forever change the health trajectory of our most vulnerable population as well as change the economic viability of the agencies who often struggle to support them,” the release stated.
 
“The organizations in the network already have the experience, expertise, and community relationships to deliver these services. They are known for providing food boxes to the food insecure, adding a wheelchair ramp for greater access, linking someone to trauma-informed mental health services or transporting someone safely to a job interview,” Sarah Ridout, program director for the Healthy Opportunities Pilot, said in the release. “They are trusted supports within their communities and have raised their hands to participate in a pilot that could change Medicaid.”
 
Click here for a list of the organizations participating in the HSO Network and Healthy Opportunities Pilot.