Description

This brief profiles and classifies burgeoning community-level efforts to integrate the activities of disparate social service organizations with local health care delivery systems in order to identify common challenges and solutions to address the challenges. A mixed-methods approach, including literature search, surveys, and semi-structured interviews with program leaders, and consultation with expert panels was used. Cross-sector community partnerships were categorized in four dimensions. Five common challenges were identified: 1) inadequate strategies to sustain cost savings, improvement, and funding; 2) lack of accurate and timely measurement of return on investment; 3) lack of mechanisms to share potential savings between health care and social services providers; 4) lack of expertise to integrate multiple data sources during health care or social services provision; and 5) lack of a cross-sector workflow evidence base.