MORRISVILLE (June 4, 2019) – The North Carolina Institute of Medicine (NCIOM) has published the second product of its year-long Task Force on Accountable Care Communities. Partnering to Improve Health: A Guide to Starting an Accountable Care Communities is a starter manual for communities interested in forming cross-sector partnerships to address health-related social needs. This is particularly relevant in the growing movement to value-based care, which is on the minds of those monitoring the state’s transition to Medicaid managed care.
Accountable Care Communities (ACCs) provide a model for how to broaden our definition of health and bring together the often-siloed efforts in communities to both keep people healthy and address their health care needs once they are sick. They integrate health care, public health, education, social services, and other sectors to address multiple drivers of health. That can be anything from addressing people’s access to food and safe housing, to linking people facing interpersonal violence with the services they need to find stability.
“The Task Force on Accountable Care Communities developed 24 recommendations, many aimed at policymakers, to help create the opportunities for communities to form ACCs,” said Brieanne Lyda-McDonald, Project Director at the NCIOM. “We also wanted to provide people working on the ground in communities across the state with information they can use right now to start thinking about how to form an ACC. The guide describes the core principles of ACCs, lots of resources to use as a springboard for moving forward, and considerations to make along the way.”
Existing coalitions and partnerships across the state are prime candidates for developing their efforts further to become an ACC-style model. The NCIOM is continuing efforts to get the word out about this concept and is actively seeking opportunities to present to communities, trade organizations, local government officials, and others.
The North Carolina Institute of Medicine (NCIOM) is an independent, quasi-state agency that was chartered by the North Carolina General Assembly in 1983 to provide balanced, nonpartisan information on issues of relevance to the health of North Carolina’s population. For more information, visit www.nciom.org.
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