Customized Consulting Packages:

The first step in a customized consulting package will be to participate in a free consultation with the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging’s (n4a) consulting team to discuss the results of your readiness assessment. During this one-hour session, your agency will have the opportunity to highlight its goals, strategies, primary concerns and challenges, as well as a budget for consulting services related to preparing your organization for cross-sector partnerships. This discussion will help inform the customization of your CBO’s consulting package.

Following the initial call, the consulting team will propose a variety of packages depending on your CBO’s needs, budget and priorities. Possible areas of focus for tailored consulting packages include:

• Completion of a consultant assessment using the same framework as the online readiness assessment tool to help validate and/or challenge your organizational readiness for partnering with health care organizations. Based on the results of this assessment, a capacity building plan may be included to help your CBO prioritize where to focus your organization’s resources in preparing and readying for contracts.
• Development of a project and/or implementation plan to increase accountability in managing and monitoring cross-sector partnership development strategies and efforts.
• Support that will assist agencies in evaluating the options and decisions necessary to develop a network hub.
• Guidance and process tools to complete a market assessment to identify and understand potential health care partners, competitors and collaborators
• Development of an integrated model design and/or recommendations on packaging and pricing your services to sell to health care organizations.
• Resources, support and coaching to develop and effectively articulate a meaningful value proposition aimed at generating interest of multiple types of health care organizations.
• Guidance on financial modeling, including calculation of your agency’s breakeven point for a given set of services in the competitive marketplace, service delivery costs, packaging and pricing and generating financial return to support your agency’s mission.
• Support in identifying important data measures and developing a process for collecting, sharing and analyzing data.
• Training to help prepare your team and your network of service providers for contracting. This training may, for example, address payer expectations, processes and culture change

Getting the Most Value Out of n4a Consulting Support:

• Assemble a team from your staff to work with n4a’s consultant(s) on your health care contracting project. The team should have representation from leadership, finance, operations and other positions that will be actively involved in the pursuit, design and implementation of cross-sector partnerships.
• Assign a lead individual to serve as the primary contact for the work. This person will devote the time and attention to ensure that the tasks are achieved as defined in the consulting package. The purpose of the consulting and coaching is to help your agency quickly develop new capabilities, resources and tools that are sustainable once the support ends. Dedicating an individual to oversee this process is highly recommended.
• Move forward if your team has prioritized cross-sector partnership development as a viable organizational strategy.

To get started, please contact Paul Cantrell at pcantrell@n4a.org today!