Success Story
Care Connect Washington
Washington’s Department of Health developed the Care Connect Washington program during the COVID-19 pandemic to support the crisis response effort throughout the state, creating infrastructure to link state funding with on-the-ground, community-based care coordinators who worked to meet the basic needs of people self-isolating or quarantining at home.
The Care Connect program initially supported individuals with basic needs—such as housing, food, and financial assistance—while they were in isolation or quarantine. As vaccines became widely available and quarantine requirements ended, the program evolved to focus on long-term care coordination.
At its peak, Care Connect linked nine regional HUBs with over 100 local care coordinators. These HUBs partnered with community-based organizations to deliver client-centered support. The program also established a strong communication network between the state and frontline providers, streamlining data sharing, documentation, request processing, and care coordination.
This seamless connection ensured that new guidelines and recommendations from the Department of Health were quickly and reliably communicated to an engaged community workforce—giving providers the confidence that they were receiving trusted, up-to-date information.
The Department of Health reached out to CCS to partner with to rapidly launch the Care Connect Washington effort, providing and customizing care coordination solutions to support the information exchange between HUBs, community care coordinators, and the state. The need for timely and nimble response during the crisis was crucial to the program’s success given the ever-changing landscape during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Care Connect quickly became the state-wide data system to coordinate outreach and facilitate resource connections to support vulnerable populations and community members. As the pandemic’s crisis response period closed, the department shifted the program’s focus to long-term recovery.
- Implementation: Connect people to needed services during self-isolation or quarantine.
Communication, referrals, and care coordination: Bring multiple regional networks of local organizations together, allowing them to make referrals and coordinate care.
- Invoicing: Authorize and track payments to CBOs for work and services provided.
- Track interventions: Track intervention measures administered as part of the program’s outreach and care coordination efforts.
Transition: Support transition from emergency pandemic support to long-term recovery.
CCS Health™ was instrumental in developing the COVID-19 recovery model that supported Care Connect Washington’s data collection, tracking, and service coordination. From the initial technology design through program implementation, CCS Health provided strategic consultation to align the solution with the infrastructure needs of the state, regional HUBs, community-based organizations, and the care coordination workforce. Comprehensive training and ongoing support ensured that all participating organizations and their teams effectively utilized CCS Health’s solutions.
The system was set up to ensure that the same information could be captured across geographies, HUBs, care coordinators, and community members to create consistent, shareable data, including includes disease status, information from the Washington Disease Reporting System (WDRS), and client IDs. The client could be connected to referrals at the state or local level using CCS Health’s Healthbridge.care™ for intake and assignment to HUBs. CCS Health™ integrated into the department’s internet-based, voice-calling system, making it easier for care coordinators to make and manage incoming calls from a single application. This simplified and sped up the process of supporting individual community members.
Information from client interactions was captured, managed, and updated using CCS Health’s Community Health Record, allowing community-based organizations and workforce, HUBs, and the state to demonstrate results, improve decision-making, and enhance communication with the public. A state-wide system provided transparency for Department of Health, lending to a confidence and assurance that all community members were receiving a standard of care while their needs were being addressed.
The close partnership and collaboration between CCS Health, the Department of Health, the regional hubs, community-based organizations, and coordinators in the field created a statewide movement where communities and even hard-to-reach populations had access to the resources and support they needed during the pandemic.
- Implementation: The state successfully implemented a solution to support the crisis response and recovery efforts, connecting isolated and self-quarantining people to needed services.
- Communication: Nine participating HUBs and a variety of local organizations, including public health departments and large and small community-based organizations used a single platform for documentation, complex care coordination, request processing and tracking, and payment authorization.
- Referrals: Statewide call centers and local and regional organizations could make and track referrals easily in one consistent system, creating a closed-loop referral process that ensured that clients’ needs didn’t fall through the cracks.
- Care coordination: Complex care coordination between community-based coordinators, HUBs, and the Department of Health was supported. For instance, as coordinators documented clients’ grocery needs and submitted orders, the regional HUB coordinated with the Department and local grocery stores for fulfillment, while community-based workers handled pickup and delivery to clients. In some cases, they even secured mattresses to support individuals isolating in their garages.
- Invoicing: The Community Health Record’s invoicing feature enabled HUBs to identify whether transactions were billable to specific payors. Once approved, detailed reports could be generated and submitted directly to the appropriate payors.
Track interventions: The Department of Health captured and used information collected by individual care coordinators and HUBs throughout the three-year response and recovery period. They also successfully tracked and measured data regarding services and interventions provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the work, receive reimbursement from the state and federal government, and aid in decision-making processes. Some of the data collected included:
- Between 2020 and 2023, the Department of Health, through Care Connect helped meet the basic needs of 131,741 people, creating access to personal protective equipment (PPE), food kits, fresh food, medication deliveries, and housing and child care assistance.
- 26,796 personal protective equipment deliveries were made and tracked, with 3,608,134 units delivered.
- Between 2020 and 2023, the Department of Health, through Care Connect helped meet the basic needs of 131,741 people, creating access to personal protective equipment (PPE), food kits, fresh food, medication deliveries, and housing and child care assistance.
- Transition: Care Connect successfully transitioned the program and technology from crisis response to long-term recovery, and created a process to continue to share guidance on statewide measures with community providers.
"CCS Health provided excellent support to our region as the COVID-19 pandemic hit, including building a new pre-visit screening tool our workforce could use to keep everyone safe. They made sure we had everything our region specifically needed in addition to fitting in with the state-wide documentation requirements.”
– Former Care Connect HUB Director