Resources | Healthier Washington Collaboration Portal

AAFP Telehealth Toolkit

For family medicine practices, the COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the inadequacy of fee-for-service (FFS) payment to support family medicine practices’ focus on health, wellness, and disease prevention.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, ACOG, provides an indispensable decision-support resource for women's health care providers—reliable and relevant, grounded in scientific evidence, and developed through a rigorous and inclusive process.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

ACEs Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) refers to traumatic events experienced in childhood that impact health over the lifespan. These include physical, emotional and sexual abuse, neglect, and/or family dysfunction. Learn more about specific ACEs linked to negative health outcomes in adulthood, including: experiencing homelessness, community violence, discrimination, and deportation or migration.

AHRQ COVID-19 Resources

Response to the COVID-19 pandemic The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is the lead Federal agency charged with improving the safety, quality, and value of patient care delivered by America’s healthcare system. The Nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic is supported by AHRQ’s competencies in the use of practice improvement, health systems research, and data and analytics.

American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine

The American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine is the professional organization for physicians specializing in hospice and palliative medicine. Membership is open to other health care providers who are committed to improving the quality of life of patients and families facing life-threatening or serious conditions. Activities focus on education and training, resources, networking, and advocacy.

Behavioral Health Clinical Quality Measures Tool

Developed to assist behavioral health providers in their practice transformation efforts, this tool consolidates behavioral health-related clinical quality measures endorsed by the National Quality Forum (NQF), a convening of multiple stakeholders in relevant areas responsible for reviewing and recommending healthcare quality measures. Coaches can use this tool as a reference guide as they help providers and practices navigate toward whole-person care.

Billing and Information Technology: A Toolkit for Behavioral Health Agencies

Billing and Information Technology: A Toolkit for Behavioral Health Agencies The Healthier Washington initiative has set a statewide goal of financially integrating physical and behavioral health care, including substance use disorder treatment, by January 2020. This change will impact:

Birth Control Methods Chart

Designed for providers to help clients consider their birth control options, this chart takes client autonomy into account and presents birth control methods clients can start and stop on their own and those that require provider involvement (prescription or procedure). The chart highlights method characteristics, including use and frequency, so clients can make informed decisions, based on their own preferences.

Bree Collaborative Survey Bank

A collection of surveys that can be used to measure elements of implementation projects within schools, public health organizations, and healthcare centers.

Case Example for Incorporating Social Needs Into Care: Contra Costa and Health Leads

Contra Costa partnered with Health Leads to integrate patients' basic needs into care delivery. Learn about their challenges and experiences in shifting from volume-based to value-based care.

Cheat Sheet on Medicare Payments for Behavioral Health Integration Services

Medicare pays for services provided to patients participating in a collaborative care program or receiving other behavioral health integration (BHI) services. The payment structure may be used for patients with any behavioral health condition being addressed by the treating provider, including substance use disorders. The codes described are not billable by Federally Qualified Health Centers or Rural Health Clinics.

Chronic Care Management Partner Toolkit

This toolkit contains educational materials and resources to raise awareness about the importance of chronic care management (CCM) services for Medicare and dual eligible patients who are managing multiple chronic conditions. Category: chronic disease prevention and control

Chronic Care Management Patient Postcard - English

This post card can be given to patients for more information about Chronic Care Management Resource. For Spanish version, click here Category: chronic disease prevention and control

Clinical Data Repository (CDR) Application for Behavioral Health Providers

Behavioral health providers contracted with Medicaid can now access OneHealthPort, Washington state’s Provider Data Service and Health Information Exchange (HIE) system, for a more comprehensive view of a client’s engagement in care.

Clinical guide for treating pregnant and parenting women that use opioids

This guide provides comprehensive, national guidance for management of pregnant and parenting women with opioid use disorder and their infants. The clinical guide helps healthcare professionals and patients determine the most clinically appropriate action for a particular situation and informs individualized treatment decisions.

Clinical Practice Guidelines for Quality Palliative Care

The mission of the National Consensus Project for Quality Palliative Care is to create clinical practice guidelines that improve the quality of palliative care in the United States. Specifically, the clinical practice guidelines promote quality palliative care, foster consistent and high standards in palliative care, and encourage continuity of care across settings.

Collaborative Care Case Example: New York City Health + Hospitals

New York City Health + Hospitals, one of the country's largest public health care system, uses a collaborative care model to integrate mental health into primary care. They provide screening and treatment in the primary care setting. Main takeaways:

Collaborative Care for Chronic Pain

Report and Recommendations from the Bree Collaborative Treatment of pain varies widely between systems and clinicians with high financial and human cost. Moving to a collaborative or team-based approach to managing complex pain has been shown to result in better patient outcomes. However, most approaches to pain management including chronic opioid therapy involved siloed health care providers. This workgroup met from January 2018 to January 2019 and defined minimum standards for:

Collaborative Care for Opioid and Alcohol Use Disorders in Primary Care The SUMMIT Randomized Clinical Trial

Collaborative Care for Opioid and Alcohol Use Key Points Question: Does collaborative care for opioid and alcohol use disorders increase treatment use and self-reported abstinence compared with usual primary care?

Collaborative Care Model Effective For Addiction Treatment

Collaborative care has a way of stretching the skill sets of all involved. Over the past few years, we have come to realize the importance of treating not only common mental disorders but also addiction problems in primary care. Mark Duncan, M.D., shares his experience treating patients with substance use disorders in a collaborative care model and shows us that leveraging the strengths of collaborative care for addiction treatment has much promise. —Jürgen Unützer, M.D., M.P.H.

Communication Skills for Clinicians

Research through a National Institutes of Health grant proved that “communication skills for serious illness are learnable.” VitalTalk is a nationally known Seattle 501(c)(3) that disseminates that research. VitalTalk states, “We believe every clinician can become a better communicator.”

Community Health Workers - core components of effectiveness

Community health workers are a crucial resource for healthcare transformation. Take a look at a new article from the NEJM Catalyst series.

Community Priorities in Women, Gender, and Maternal Health

From the Issue Brief (April 2023) There is growing political interest in preserving, restoring, and extending Medicaid coverage for services and supports for women, gender, and maternal health. As federal and state policymakers consider opportunities to improve outcomes, they have been exploring a myriad of options, including community-based models of care, such as use of doulas and midwives, extension of postpartum care to 12-months of coverage, and access to sexual and reproductive health services.

COVID-19 and Chronic Pain Management

New Opioid Pain Management Guide Recommends Telehealth Patient Care Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, primary care physicians should provide opioid therapy for their patients through telehealth visits using two-way video such as Skype or FaceTime, or by telephone, according to a new guide issued by the AHRQ-funded Six Building Blocks program.

COVID-19 Healthcare Provider Resources and Recommendations

Washington State Department of Health's Healthcare Provider Resources & Recommendations in response to the 2019 Novel Coronavirus Outbreak (COVID-19)

Defining a Strategy for Value-based Contracting

This workbook was designed to assist BHAs in becoming familiar with elements of VBP, value-based payments, and provide tools to help with these transformation efforts. Ideally, the agency leadership team will have reviewed the Value-Based Payment Practice Transformation Planning Guide developed in partnership with the Healthier Washington Practice Transformation Support Hub, National Council for Behavioral Health, and the Washington Council for Behavioral Health and will have assembled a VBP/transformation team.

Driver Diagram

Driver Diagram A driver diagram is a visual display of a team’s theory of what “drives,” or contributes to, the achievement of a project aim. This clear picture of a team’s shared view is a useful tool for communicating to a range of stakeholders where a team is testing and working.

Education in Palliative and End of Life Care, EPEC

Education in Palliative and End of Life Care, EPEC, is an online program designed to train physicians on the essential clinical competencies required to provide quality end-of-life care. A handbook and video version of the training are both available, as well as slide sets on many palliative care topics. Continuing Medical Education (CME) available.

Electronic Patient-Reported Outcomes Toolkit

Integrating ePROs into Care Delivery A new toolkit funded by AHRQ’s Digital Healthcare Research Program is available to help healthcare systems integrate electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePROs) into care delivery. The ePROs in Clinical Care toolkit provides evidence-based guidelines and strategies for the use of PROs that are collected electronically, rather than through traditional pen-and-paper methods. The toolkit is organized around three core topic areas where changes may be needed across the health systems: governance, integration and reporting.

End of Life Palliative Education Resource Center

The End of Life Palliative Education Resource Center (EPERC), shares educational resource material among the community of health professional educators involved in palliative care education. Its series of fact sheets provide concise, practical, peer-reviewed, and evidence-based summaries on key topics important to clinicians and trainees caring for patients facing life-limiting illnesses. Fast Facts are designed to be easily accessible and clinically relevant monographs on palliative care topics.

End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC)

End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC), an American Nurses Association project, is a national education initiative to improve end-of-life care in the United States.

Engagement in perinatal depression treatment: a qualitative study of barriers across and within racial/ethnic groups

Researchers examined care engagement factors across and within race/ethnicity to better understand previously observed racial/ethnic disparities in perinatal depression treatment.

Evidence-based outpatient miscarriage management

Onsite training: outpatient miscarriage management Onsite training offers evidence-based outpatient miscarriage management, and can help your facility offer evidence-based outpatient miscarriage management. Early pregnancy loss is common, occurring in approximately 15-20% of known pregnancies. It's often managed in the operating room despite evidence showing treatment in outpatient or emergency department settings can save time, cost, is equally safe, and is preferred by many patients.

Family Initiated Treatment (FIT)

HCA launches website about Family Initiated Treatment (FIT) The Health Care Authority (HCA) has information for communities and providers about family initiated treatment (FIT). The site includes information on outpatient FIT, inpatient FIT, and mental health information disclosures.

Financing That Rewards Better Health and Well-Being

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has prepared this brief based on a workshop in June 2021 on the need to transform the United States’ current model of health care financing – which rewards the volume of services provided – to a model that incentivizes integrated payment approaches that are person-centered and holistic in advancing individual, community, and population health.

Food Lifeline and Sea Mar Community Health Centers

About Food Lifeline and Sea Mar Community Health Centers Founded in 1979, Food Lifeline is part of the national “Feeding America” network that assists in collecting food that would otherwise go to waste to provide meals to thousands of people across Western Washington. Food Lifeline rescues millions of pounds of this surplus food from farmers, manufacturers, grocery stores, and restaurants and focuses on a long term solution to hunger.

Food Lifeline and Sea Mar Community Health Centers, Case example

Health Equity Principles for Leaders

For communities and their residents to recover fully and fairly from the COVID-19 pandemic, state and local leaders should consider the health equity principles in this resource in designing and implementing their responses. These principles are not a detailed public health guide for responding to the pandemic or reopening the economy, but rather a compass that continually points leaders toward an equitable and lasting recovery.

Heart Failure Action Plan

This resource features the different heart failure zones and how to determine them. Category: chronic disease prevention and control

Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association

The Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association is an organization for individual members of the nursing team working in the specialty of hospice and palliative care across life. The site lists curriculum and other resources specific to advanced nurses, generalist nurses, licensed practical/vocational nurses, and nursing assistants.

Hypertension Action Plan

This guide helps create an action plan for every day geared toward improving or controlling high blood pressure. Category: chronic disease prevention and control

Hypertension Change Package

This guide is for clinicians features a listing of process improvements that ambulatory clinical settings can implement as they seek optimal hypertension control. Category: chronic disease prevention and control

Hypertension Daily Patient Guide

This resource is a personal action plan for patients that have high blood pressure. Category: chronic disease prevention and control

Implementing Medication-Assisted Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder in Rural Primary Care: Environmental Scan Volume 1

The environmental scan demonstrates that, while offering MAT services in rural primary care settings may appear complex, many primary care providers view it as the treatment and "long-term management" of a chronic recurring disorder. Thus, in many ways, it is similar to the treatment they already provide for patients with asthma, diabetes, hypertension, and other chronic health conditions.

Integrating Reproductive Care and Primary Care

Upstream is a national, fast-growing nonprofit working to expand economic opportunity and mobility by reducing unplanned pregnancy in the U.S. We partner with states to provide training and technical assistance to health centers to ensure all women have same-day access to the birth control method of their choice. Our unique approach empowers women to decide when and if they want to become pregnant, improving economic and health outcomes for parents, children, and society.

Mayo Clinic "Care That Fits" Resource

Depression Medication Choice Mayo Clinic Shared Decision Making National Resource Center The choice of depression medications in primary care is difficult as there are many choices The best evidence does not indicate clear winners in terms of efficacy The choice is then mostly across agents' toxicity, burdens, and costs, and other issues patients care about Additional resources: Mayo Clinic Shared Decision Making National Resource Center

Medication-Assisted Treatment Models of Care for Opioid Use Disorder in Primary Care Settings

A number of MAT models of care have been developed and implemented in primary care settings. Research is needed to clarify optimal MAT models of care and to understand effective strategies for overcoming barriers to implementation. The models of care presented in this technical brief may help inform the individualized implementation or MAT models of care in different primary care settings.

MeHAF

The MeHAF is a widely used measure of behavioral health integration that can be used for initial assessment and to follow changes in levels of integration. It is easy to use and makes sense for a range of clinical settings - both primary care and community mental health.

MeHAF Facilitation Guide

The MeHAF Facilitation Guide accompanies the site self assessment survey (SSA) to assist primary care practices and behavioral health agencies in completing the MeHAF Site Self-Assessment. The SSA is used to evaluate progress toward bi-directional behavioral and physical health integration. We recommend completing the assessment with a coach or practice facilitator in addition to using this guide.

Mental Health in Rural Communities Toolkit

The Mental Health in Rural Communities Toolkit compiles evidence-based and promising models and resources to support organizations implementing mental health programs in rural communities across the United States, with a primary focus on adult mental health. The modules in the toolkit contain resources and information focused on developing, implementing, evaluating, and sustaining rural mental health programs. There are more resources on general community health strategies available in the Rural Community Health Toolkit.