Request for Proposals: Statewide Evaluation of Washington's Community Care Hubs

The Coalition of ACHs, the association of Washington’s Accountable Communities of Health, is seeking an experienced research firm to conduct a statewide evaluation of the ACHs’ Community Care Hubs, funded through the state’s Medicaid 1115 Waiver renewal.

Please note the deadline for this RFP has been moved to Wed, Sept. 11th at 5pm. Please click here for the updated RFP.

Background

While there has been increasing attention to the importance of addressing unmet social needs to improve health outcomes and lower the cost of care, our health care systems have not adequately built the support structure around local grassroots organizations working diligently to address the social needs of the region. Because of that lack of support, significant gaps remain, including:

Current social care services are limited and fragmented, with the care coordinators in each community working in siloed systems
The expertise of community organizations isn’t fully utilized
There are no systemic data on social care needs nor the impact of social care services
There is a lack of sustainable financing for social care
Most community-based organizations have limited administrative and/or technical capacity to contract with health plans, providers, local and state governments systems

ACH Community Hubs will address these gaps by building and supporting regional networks of social care, expanding and strengthening the community-based health workforce for social care coordination and helping to connect Medicaid enrollees to the services they need. ACH Community Hubs will also provide centralized data collection and reporting on social needs, available services and gaps and outcomes.

This community-based, coordinated approach will help break down existing silos in social care and advance health equity. Authentic and sustainable community engagement is needed to develop solutions that lead to inclusive and lasting progress toward health equity. ACH Community Hubs will invest in and support trusted, community-centered, culturally and linguistically effective organizations. ACH Community Hubs will also strengthen the voice of these social care providers in the delivery system, which is an important shift toward recognizing the community voices essential to advancing equity goals.

Evaluation RFP Q&A

Posted Sept. 3, 2024

Question: Is CACH interested in proposals that incorporate intentional capacity building activities into the evaluation approach? For example, in leveraging innovative engagement methodologies to gather evaluation data it is also possible to teach participants these methods while simultaneously collecting information. This approach would increase the cost of our proposal, so we want to ensure this would be considered a value-add by you all before including it.
Answer: The ACHs are interested in seeing what each of the proposers suggests, so inclusion of this activity is up to you. (This could also be reflected as an optional add on).

Question: What is the approximate budget ceiling for this work?

Answer: $1 million is the budget for this evaluation.

**Please note the CACH has decided to set $1 million as the maximum award amount. (Previous guidance indicated there was no set limit, just an estimated budget amount of $1 million.)

Question: Who would hold the contract for the evaluation and be the funder of record?
Answer: The Association will hold the contract and be the funder (though one of the member ACHs may do it on behalf of the Association).

Question: What is the allowable indirect rate?
Answer: Your federally negotiated indirect rate or the 15% de minimis is what is allowable but be aware the indirect costs must be included in the $1 million budget.

Question: We are interested in learning more about the expected data sharing agreements so that we can appropriately plan for the level of complexity. For example, would the successful bidder need to create data sharing agreements with all the CCHs individually or is there already an administrative data sharing agreement in place via the CACH?
Answer: Yes, a DSA will be needed with each of the ACH CCHs individually.

Question: Can you describe more about the CCH CMS & administrative data from the RFP. Will the successful bidder utilize identifiable claims data? If so, will the bidder work through a collaborative partnership with a public health agency or a ResDAC for access?
Answer: The successful bidder will have access to the ACHs’ Client Management System data. It is unclear if any additional data will be available from HCA for this evaluation.