Learn About the Outreach Program at Acentra Health

As a contractor for Medicare, Acentra Health serves as the Beneficiary and Family Centered Care Quality Improvement Organization, also referred to as a BFCC-QIO. While Acentra Health provides BFCC-QIO services in 29 states (visit https://www.acentraqio.com to see the states served), the general information is relevant to everyone who has Medicare (including Medicare Advantage) and everyone who works with people who have Medicare.  

This episode is a conversation with our Outreach Specialists, Nancy Jobe and Kia Weaver about their work with providers and stakeholders that work with people with Medicare. For more information about Acentra Health BFCC-QIO, please visit https://www.acentraqio.com. 

KEY TOPICS  

00:24: Overview, introduction of guests, Nancy Jobe and Kia Weaver 

02:55: Role of the Outreach Specialist and how collaboration works 

04:20: Description of stakeholder and ones Acentra Health works with frequently 

05:56: Services we offer to stakeholders 

07:47: Partnerships with other organizations, including those that work with underserved and rural 

12:40: Summary and final thoughts 

SUBSCRIBE

Subscribe to our newsletters: Case Review Connections, On the Healthcare Front at https://www.acentraqio.com/newsletters 

RESOURCES 

BFCC-QIO Information for providers: www.acentraqio.com/providers 

BFCC-QIO Information for stakeholders: www.acentraqio.com/partners 

BFCC-QIO Information for people who have Medicare: https://www.acentraqio.com/bene 

Request a Speaker - https://acentraqio.com/partners/frmSpeaker.aspx 

Nancy Jobe – Nancy.Jobe@acentra.com or Kia Weaver – Kia.Weaver@acentra.com for presentations on Acentra Health’s BFCC-QIO services 

Music: Motivational Upbeat Corporate by RinkevichMusic https://soundcloud.com/rinkevichmusic, https://protunes.net/  

Video Link: https://bit.ly/3NNqGTs 

Transcript

Welcome to Aging Health Matters, a podcast from Acentra Health, a Beneficiary and Family Centered Care Quality Improvement Organization. We plan to cover healthcare topics for the Medicare population. Information in today's show may help you or someone you know in their healthcare journey. Thanks for joining us. Now let's get started.   

Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Aging Health Matters, a podcast from Acentra Health. My name is Scott Fortin, and I'll be your host today and a little bit about who we are. As a reminder, Acentra Health operates in 29 states as the contractor on behalf of Medicare. We work in three core services on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries, and that is through appeals, quality of care, and Immediate Advocacy. For more information on those items, you can check our website, acentraqio.com, or in the Show Notes. With me today, I have two familiar voices if you are a fan of our podcast, and that is our two Outreach Specialists, Kia Weaver and Nancy Jobe. Hello ladies.  

Good morning.  

Good morning, Scott. 

I know folks know quite a bit about both of you already, but just by way of those that might be a first time podcaster with us, or as a reminder, could you both introduce yourself a little bit and talk about some of the areas you cover, et cetera? 

Sure. Hi everyone. My name is Kia Weaver, and I'm one of the Outreach Specialists here with Acentra Health. I work with stakeholders and providers in 14 states, all of which are in CMS Regions 1 and 4. And as an Outreach Specialist, I provide outreach to providers, stakeholders, and Medicare beneficiaries to raise awareness about Medicare rights and the role of the BFCC-QIO.  

Thanks Kia. 

And I am Nancy Jobe. I am also an Outreach Specialist, and my territory is Regions 6, 8, and 10 for CMS, and that would include all the western states from Colorado to Alaska. I do have 15 different states, and I am happy to help all my stakeholders understand what the BFCC-QIO does, and hopefully by the end of this podcast, you all will too.  

Great. Thanks Nancy. Thank you ladies. I appreciate that. As you can see, we have divided our 29 states between Kia and Nancy almost equally. They do have conversations with people every day from stakeholders, which we'll define a little bit later I think. They talk to people that are involved with those that have Medicare, including at times people that do have Medicare directly. 

Could we talk a little bit about your role and how you collaborate with the people that you collaborate on a daily basis? I know one of the things that you do a lot is you do trainings with some of our partners and around some of their needs, learning about what we do. So could one of you explain that, or both of you explain that to me a little bit. 

This is Nancy, and yes, I'm always excited to be able to train other trainers, and what we mean by that is I'm working with different stakeholders such as different state SHIP programs or Long-term Care Ombudsman programs and helping them train their staff and volunteers that go out to talk with the different beneficiaries. 

You know, as one person it's very difficult to reach out to 15 different states, so this is a great opportunity for us to train other people that are in direct contact with beneficiaries so we can help spread the word of different beneficiaries’ Medicare rights and what we do as the BFCC-QIO. 

Great. Thanks Nancy. And Kia, I'll throw it to you with a question added. We talk a lot in what we do about stakeholders, and we've talked about that in previous podcasts, and there's an advertisement for that. If you haven't listened to some of our previous podcasts, I'd urge you to go back and listen to some and catch yourself up on some of the great content we have. 

But Kia, could you describe a little bit what our definition of a stakeholder is and some of the most frequent people that we deal with. I know Nancy mentioned a few, but what they do and some of their roles and how they work with the Medicare population.  

Sure. So stakeholders are organizations that serve a similar population, so in our case, it would be Medicare beneficiaries. Stakeholders are often impacted by the outcomes of the BFCC-QIO program as well and also share similar goals for Medicare beneficiaries. Some of the most frequently engaged stakeholders that we work with include healthcare providers, community-based organizations, hospital and nursing home associations, also long-term care associations, so those are the most frequently engaged partners that we work with. Many of these partners provide discharge services for Medicare patients, so we work with them regarding our hospital discharge appeal services. We also provide Immediate Advocacy services for patients that are in need of our services either at the facility or at home. 

So we provide a variety of services for Medicare beneficiaries and often work with these stakeholders in order to make sure that Medicare beneficiaries have access to our services.  

Great. Thank you. I appreciate the definition, and as we look at what both of you do on a daily basis, I know that every day doesn't look the same as the last. I know that your jobs are extremely varied. I know some of those things include, as you've talked about, train the trainer, but could you tell me a little bit more about some of the things that you could offer to our audience, whether they be a stakeholder, a healthcare provider, or even a beneficiary's family or a beneficiary, and help people to understand what we do and how to interact better with us? So tell us a little bit about some of the activities that you do on a daily or weekly basis and how you get the word out about what we do.  

Scott, I know that I spent a lot of time researching out a lot of different organizations and associations in different states, different programs that might be available for beneficiaries in different states, so that I can reach out to them and let them know about our services and keep them informed of what it is that we do and how can they help, and we can work together and partner to make sure that the Medicare beneficiaries understand that they have these rights with the services that we offer. And lots of times these organizations will invite us to be a part of their advisory groups in their state, and I'm always excited to do that. Because as a member of an advisory group, we're able to really get a better handle about what's happening in that particular state and how can we really work together to reach out to different people in that state. It's a great little think tank for both of us to be able to work together on those kind of items. 

Absolutely. Go ahead Kia.  

And just to add on to what Nancy said, so as Outreach Specialists, we do share all relevant information and updates, and this also includes news and updates from Medicare. We also work with organizations by giving joint presentations, quarterly staff trainings. We present our webinars on conference calls, so we work with our stakeholders and organizations in a variety of ways. 

Great. Thank you. I appreciate it. One of the things that I picked up on that both of you have talked about during our time here is partners and partnership. Again, if you have been a part of these podcasts in the past, you know how much we value our partners that come on these with us, and that is something that we truly feel is an important part of working through getting information out because as Nancy said, there are many times we aren't going to be able to reach people directly, but that ability to tell people who we are and train them on the elements of what we do, they can help spread the word. Now, I know that you do a lot with general audiences, but I know that you both, obviously due to your geographical approach, Nancy being out heavily in midwestern, western areas and Kia being out more east, that you do have some differences that you see in some of the populations. 

Could you talk to me a little bit about some of the rural or different underserved or urban type of settings that you might see in your work and how we try to work with partners in that as you're going through your daily work? 

I know Scott, for me, being in the western states, and a lot of them seem to be not as fruitful in population in a lot of areas. So a lot of people will say that would be rural, but I find rural to really be a lot of different areas, not necessarily that extremely remote little town, but just overall a particular state may be considered the whole state rule because of the simple fact that they may only have one or two major cities in it, but that doesn't mean that their health care is any less in the other areas. 

But how I try and reach out to those different areas is I work with the state associations, but I'm trying to work with those that have staff in every county. That way we're able to reach out to all parts of that state, such as Long-term Care Ombudsman. They're in every county, or SHIP programs, they're in every county. 

So by working with those particular partners, we're able to reach out into those areas that may get missed if they're not in a large city. It's extremely important that they understand that they have these rights in those rural hospital settings or clinics that they're in.  

Great. Thank you, Kia. 

Sure. So just to add on to that, we have gained information pertaining to who the heaviest users of our services are and who are the lowest. And we did find out that the lowest are those in Hispanic and Asian communities. So in an effort to increase access to our services in those communities, we have collaborated with several organizations with this focus in mind. 

For example, in Region 4, we have collaborated with the SHINE Department at the Florida Department of Elder Affairs. We provided a presentation on our services to all of the bilingual liaisons, and we also shared several educational resources that were translated into Spanish, including a Spanish newsletter. 

The Florida Department of Elder Affairs was also a guest on our Aging Health Matters podcast regarding disparities in the Hispanic community. And in Region 1, we presented at the CMS Rural Health Town Hall meeting, and we continue to collaborate with rural health associations and CMS Regions 1 and 4 as well. 

Great. Absolutely to the point of rural not being just in the territories that Nancy mentioned. As Kia mentioned, there's lots of pockets of rural communities throughout each of our areas that we cover. We really feel, as far as a philosophy goes, that we need to offer information to people where they are and how they need to be reached, whatever that is, whether that's in a different language, at a different level of health literacy, or to try to help address areas of medical need where people have access issues, whether that's rural or urban. Those are some of the things that we try to assist with in our work. So I appreciate both of you kind of giving that description. As Kia mentioned, we do have a portion of our website, acentraqio.com, that does allow you to change things into different languages, but we do also have especially bilingual resources in Spanish available to those that do need that, whether by download or just by looking through the pages themselves. 

So there are a lot of resources, and I would urge you all to go to the website for those resources. So as we close up our time together, Kia and Nancy, is there anything else that you'd like to add?  

I think for me, Scott, it's really important that we're able to reach out to all these different areas, and I look forward to anyone that's interested in having us speak for them or help them with an advisory board or help them in any training that they may be having or know about an organization that might be benefited by what we do. 

Then I would really welcome them to reach out to us, and they can do that by going onto our website, and they can ask for us as a presenter for their next training.  

Absolutely, there is a section for that that you can find to request a presentation from Nancy and Kia. We also can include their information in the Show Notes below with their email addresses if you'd like to reach out to them directly. 

So Kia.  

Just to echo what Nancy said, please feel free to let us know if you'd like us to speak on a quarterly staff training, any conference calls. If you have any staff turnovers or people that have been transitioned into new roles, please feel free to reach out to us. And just so our listeners know, you can go on our website, acentraqio.com, and it would be at the very bottom under the section that says Information for our Partners and Stakeholders and just hit the request a speaker option for that. 

Absolutely. Great. Thanks, Kia for guiding people through that on the website. Well I thank you both so much for your time today. I know that you're both busy working with your partners and also doing podcasts, so if you love hearing Kia and Nancy, they shared the podcast hosting duties with me with their partners. 

So we would urge you to catch up on previous podcasts, and I thank both of you for what you do each day, but also for your time here in educating our audience. And just as a reminder, we have lots of resources available to people that need them on our website, and that is, we have YouTube videos, we've got podcasts, we have newsletters both for stakeholders and for people with Medicare and their families. 

We have posters and flyers that you can look at, download, and other resources that are downloadable. So I would urge you all to check the Show Notes or go to www.acentraqio.com and find those resources. Again, thank you ladies for your time, and I would just ask for everyone to stay tuned for the next episode where we're going to explore more topics that are relevant to your healthcare journey. 

Thanks and have a great day everyone.