In the evolving landscape of healthcare and social services, the emergence of community care hubs (CCHs) represents a significant step toward integrating these two sectors. What results could improve the experience of navigating life’s challenges as we grow, age, and build community.
This post provides a brief overview of the national movement aimed at growing these hubs and Trellis’ experience in building one of the first community care hubs in the country in partnership with hundreds of community-based, public health and government organizations across our state.
Understanding community care hubs
At its core, a community care hub is a community-focused entity that centralizes administrative supports for a network of community-based organizations offering social services intended to improve health outcomes. By centralizing functions such as healthcare billing, compliance, technology applications, marketing, business development, network recruitment and management, and analytics, we can ensure that we are maximizing value that is only possible by bringing a network together, rather than approaching the work individually. The Partnership to Align Social Care published a guide that lists these functions and their related standards.
Community care hubs allow community-based and healthcare organizations to work in tandem to address health-related social needs, fostering a more holistic approach to care beyond traditional medical interventions. The Juniper community care hub, spearheaded by Trellis in Minnesota, has become a national model by integrating social care with healthcare to provide tailored services that meet local needs, leveraging trusted relationships with local community and healthcare organizations, and driving value for patients, healthcare providers, health insurers and public organizations.
Juniper was one of the country’s first 58 community care hubs operating centralized functions and is often referenced as a model for newer hubs. Centralizing these functions has helped us bring nearly $3 million to community organizations throughout Minnesota that would not have otherwise been available to support service delivery.
The intersection of healthcare and social services
By integrating healthcare and social services we can use social care as a treatment tool at a much broader scale. Chronic diseases, responsible for 86% of all healthcare costs, alongside other factors such as functional decline and the risks associated with falls, underline the critical need for preventive and holistic care strategies.
Benefits of community care hubs
By integrating traditional health care with social supports, community care hubs represent an opportunity to improve health outcomes while curbing the rising costs of medical care. Here are just two examples of what that can look like:
Centralized data and administration: Community care hubs use shared technology to streamline data collection, leaving more time and resources for community organizations to focus on delivering high-quality services.
Expanding access and fostering equity: CCHs like Juniper ensure that social care services, including fall prevention and chronic disease management, are accessible to diverse populations across a broad geography.
Since 2017, Juniper has served more than 30,000 Minnesotans from all across our state. Over time, we’ve focused on health equity – ensuring that services are accessible to many distinct populations. Half of all people served by Juniper live in rural communities. Last year, 15% of our participants were from communities of color, and we offered healthy aging services in seven languages.
The impact on public health and healthcare costs: A case study
Integrating healthcare and social services through CCHs promises significant benefits for public health and the containment of healthcare costs. For example, fall prevention programs alone have shown remarkable savings. In 2023, 1,974 Minnesotans completed Juniper fall prevention programs. Savings attributed to those participants totaled $8.8 million.
After factoring in the cost to operate Juniper in 2023, those savings translated into a 283% return on the community care hub investment in just one year.
Bringing care hubs to scale
If Minnesota implements community care hubs at scale, we are confident that the results will translate into significant cost savings and improved efficiency in delivering social care services. Imagine what services like transportation, chore and home modifications could do if properly targeted alongside healthcare treatments during an episode of care, such as surgery recovery or a diagnosis of a chronic disease.
We think these outcomes are possible because prevention simply doesn’t cost that much, and healthcare services – such as hospitalizations, visits to the emergency room, and rehab stays are costly. President and CEO of Meals on Wheels America Ellie Hollander recently shared with the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, “We can serve a senior Meals on Wheels for an entire year for roughly the same cost as one day in the hospital or two weeks in a nursing home.”
The future of community care hubs
Integrating healthcare and social services through the community care hub model offers a promising pathway toward a more holistic, efficient, and equitable care system. By addressing both health and social needs, CCHs are crucial to unlocking the full potential of healthcare delivery, ultimately leading to healthier communities and more sustainable healthcare systems.
Want to learn more?
- Trellis President & CEO, Dawn Simonson, presented to the Minnesota Legislative Task Force on Aging on March 8, 2024. There, she shared information about Juniper and our vision for the coming integration of health and social care. You can view her testimony here.
- This 2022 article published in Health Affairs highlights Community care hubs. The article is authored by leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Administration for Community Living.
- Learn more about Juniper: https://yourjuniper.org/