Guidance & Toolkits

This paper sets out a vision for the health and human services public and private sectors to operate a system designed to provide a modern marketplace experience and to improve population well-being, while bending the health and human services cost curve over the next decade. In Promoting Greater Health and Well-Being the National Collaborative provides guiding principles, policy priorities, and helpful tools for accomplishing this vision.

On the Road to Horizontal Integration: Results from APHSA's 2015 National Survey of Health & Human Service Agencies (12/2015) — A national scan of public-sector agencies to further understand where they are on the road to service integration and data interoperability along the Human Services Value Curve. The report also outlines national trends over the past two years since the initial 2013 national scan.
APHSA/NWI Report — On the Road to a 21st Century Business Model: Where are Health & Human Services Organizations Today? (9/2013) — In the spring of 2013, NWI surveyed over 50 health and human service (H/HS) leaders from 28 states and 25 county and cities to determine where H/HS organizations stand today relative to the key features of APHSA's Business Model for Horizontal Integration of H/HS. Jurisdictions self-assessed their organizations' maturity of the key features relative to the four different levels of maturity (see the H/HS Integration Maturity Model Version 1).

This guidance provides an overview of technology's supporting role, identifies the challenges faced by health and human service leaders to build horizontally integrated and interoperable eligibility determination systems, as well as enterprise-wide Service Oriented Architectures capable of linking disparate databases from various agencies that serve the same clients, and discusses recent federal policy opportunities that can be used to effectively leverage technology to ensure that the desired outcomes are achieved.

While the subject of this guidance is "technology," it is not intended solely for IT leaders or staff. All too often, "IT issues" are labeled as something not for general consumption by governors' budget and policy staffs, commissioners/secretaries of departments or agency heads. The purpose of this paper is not to discuss the "boxes and wires" that typically constitute the grist of an IT discussion. Rather, this paper is intended primarily for those decision-makers, and their advisors just mentioned who influence key policy and operational choices during today's atmosphere of having to make difficult choices based on budget realities.

(Also see APHSA's Comment Letter to SAMHSA on the 42 CFR Part 2 NPRM)

February 2016 — The National Collaborative's Workforce Committee released its report, Human Resources as a Strategic Partner for H/HS. The report summarizes state/local findings from a survey sent in fall 2015 to collect information on how H/HS leaders leverage the HR function in their agencies. It provides recommendations for how to close the gaps between the current "as-is" partnerships and where HR could be more useful in driving the direction of ones' agency.