Maine Primary Care Association
PO Box 5137
Augusta, ME 04332
United States
The Maine Primary Care Association (MPCA) is a membership organization that represents the collective voices of Maine’s Community Health Centers, which provide high quality, primary and preventive medical, behavioral health and dental services for 1 in 6 Mainers.
While CareQuest Institute does not have an extensive history of grant funded work with MPCA, for the past two years the focus of their work has been to expand Medicaid adult dental benefits and begin to shift safety net dental practices towards value-based care and payment. In that time, MPCA successfully worked with MaineCare to coordinate peer group meetings and networking opportunities that support health center staff and community health workers (CHWs) to screen for and code social driver of health (SDoH).
There are multiple objectives outlined in the project proposal, beginning with the administration of a health center needs assessment that will be disseminated in November 2023 and inform a report to be developed in January 2024. The assessment will introduce respondents to integration issues and practice optimization as well as promoting buy-in among FQHCs who may be well-positioned to operationalize the resulting report's recommendations and/or inform technical assistance resources that will benefit practices that express interest in integrated care.
This project also aims to improve systems that will support the implementation of adult dental benefits in MaineCare. More specifically, MPCA will work to expand value-based payment/care, which includes developing a capitated alternative payment methodology (APM) and increased medical-dental integration. According to the proposals and discussions with MPCA, there is a small workgroup of health center leaders currently working on the APM and the group is beginning discussions with MaineCare about its work and the opportunity.
Finally, the proposal notes that a significant part of this project's focus includes training for local dental staff on billing and coding within the various EHR platforms used by each health center. To accomplish this, MPCA will hold monthly APM meetings with member health centers and other stakeholders with the goals for APM development to include support for innovations in care delivery, a standardized set of clinical guidelines for value-based care (VBC) supported by the new APM, and the creation of a learning community to support the new model by June 2025, soon after the state's next legislative session.
The budget requested for this proposal is $100,000, which will support staff salaries across four project positions ($80,000), contracted survey services ($8,000), travel, and supplies. The proposal budget is a slight decrease from the organization's most recent CareQuest Institute grant and is approximately 3% of the MPCA overall operating budget.