Noa Elliott
The Challenge
Wide health care disparities exist based on race and other factors. Closing these disparities and improving health outcomes has life-long benefits for everyone. With over 2.4 million members, L.A. Care is a large managed care provider. Managed care plans have large volumes of patient data that can be analyzed for insights to promote optimal outcomes. VIVA was selected to work in partnership with L.A. Care, physician practices, and others to design and implement a rapid cycle evaluation to inform systems refinements and improve member health and development outcomes.
Can a partnership approach to rapid cycle evaluation result in improved health outcomes?
The Approach
VIVA convened L.A. Care and its health care partners to engage in an evaluation planning process grounded in stakeholder experiences and feedback. Through collaborative planning sessions, stakeholder focus groups, and document review, VIVA drafted a comprehensive evaluation plan. The plan maps out key questions about the implementation and member-level health outcomes through an iterative, rapid cycle evaluation. Rapid cycle evaluation is an approach that uses innovative designs and methods to quickly test program components and provide actionable results–which are then quickly implemented and further tested.
VIVA is now implementing three evaluation cycles, which will:
- Provide information on successes, challenges, and areas of improvement for the L.A. Care Health Plan Partnership
- Center community experiences throughout the learning and decision-making processes to ensure diverse voices are heard and inform recommendations
- Facilitate a Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) process that allows project partners to be agile and respond to feedback throughout the evaluation process.
