The Altarum Institute Community Health Centers Innovation Project dentified several community health centers as partners. The following four centers participated in the more than year-long project.

Alexandria Neighborhood Health Services, Inc., Alexandria, Virginia

In the course of the more than year-long partnership with Alexandria Neighborhood Health Services, Inc. (ANHSI), Altarum staff worked closely with the center to support and improve the overall patient experience and clinical and administrative processes at the health center.  Altarum applied “lean” tools and techniques at ANHSI to improve processes – such as patient flow – with the aim of reducing patient wait time and increasing provider productivity.  “Lean” is a business management technique employed to improve efficiency and reduce waste in business processes.  

Baldwin Family Health Care in Baldwin, Michigan

Baldwin Family Health Care is committed to providing patient-centered care and aims to transform its care delivery system according to the “patient-centered medical home” model. The transformation of an organization to a patient-centered medical home is a systems-level change that takes years to be fully realized. In the context of this project, Altarum Institute assisted Baldwin Family Health Care to move closer to this goal by implementing smaller, more incremental changes. An Altarum Lean Six Sigma specialist worked directly with staff at the health center to collectively understand, visualize, and ultimately improve process flow at the organization. These efforts were aimed at prioritizing the components of the patient-centered medical home accomplished within the time frame of this project and implementing strategies to improve the overall patient experience.

Cherry Street Health Services in Grand Rapids, Michigan

Altarum collaborated with Cherry Street Health Services and its partner organizations, Touchstone innovarè, Inc. and Proaction Behavioral Health Alliance, to support the development of a multidisciplinary model for the management of chronic health conditions. Physical and behavioral chronic health conditions often co-occur, yet treatment of these conditions tends to be episodic. The center has found that this fragmented care is ineffective in helping patients to manage chronic health conditions. Altarum behavioral health specialists worked with Cherry Street Health Services to improve the current care delivery system by supporting the development of an integrated chronic care model. In this model, a multidisciplinary care team works together to develop a single treatment plan for patients. The aim was to achieve full integration of physical and behavioral health care and assist patients in successfully managing chronic health conditions. Altarum’s collaborative efforts supported the health center’s goal of providing patients with continuous, coordinated, and comprehensive care.

Penobscot Community Health Care in Bangor, Maine

Penobscot Community Health Care was in the process of implementing the patient-centered medical home model. As part of this effort to improve and transform primary care, the center used a team-based approach to care delivery. Our partnership focused on optimizing the effectiveness of these care teams to allow team members to better meet the needs of their patients. Specifically, Altarum supported a select number of care teams to identify strengths and target specific areas for enhancement relating to care management, team decision making strategies, communication processes, the use of technology, data collection and management, incentive opportunities, and various components of the patient-centered medical home model. Based on the identified areas of need, Lean Six Sigma tools and techniques were applied to enable the care teams to achieve continuous performance improvement. These evidence-based care team interventions were intended to assist Penobscot Community Health Care in developing an optimal team building process that was adaptable throughout the organization. Our collaborative efforts were aligned with Penobscot Community Health Care’s goal of implementing the patient-centered medical home model in a way that respects and builds on the health center’s unique strengths and characteristics.