FQHCs receive true partnership and make lasting impact with Yuvo Health

For decades, FQHCs have been the backbone of the community, providing essential services to the most vulnerable and underserved community members – often without the recognition or support they truly deserve. From navigating complex regulations and workforce shortages to meeting rising demand and embracing new technologies, they continuously overcome challenges to build healthier communities.

That’s why at Yuvo Health, we’re committed to easing the burdens, creating new revenue streams, enhancing operational efficiency, and being a true collaborator with our partners. Our ultimate mission is to uplift community health centers so they can continue to do what they do best: provide compassionate care to the community.

“We knew from the start that we were aligned with Yuvo’s mission. We believe they understand the unique needs of the population we serve, including our IDD patients, and we’re thrilled about how we’ve been able to innovate together and bounce ideas off each other." 

- Mary Ellen Diver, CEO, Advantage Care Health Centers

When an FQHC joins Yuvo Health, they gain a partner every step of the way—to immediately reduce the burden, provide consistent additional revenue and drive success toward shared savings.

We empower our FQHC partners to thrive through:

Contracts that deliver more revenue for FQHCs

FQHCs have traditionally lacked the leverage to negotiate contracts that align with their needs and face regulatory obstacles, often resulting in financial agreements that don’t fully support their sustainability. Yuvo opens the door to more lucrative value-based care contracts, enabling FQHCs to maintain authority and autonomy over which contracts they participate in. But that’s just the start. Yuvo also supports FQHCs throughout the entire value-based care journey. 

“For many FQHC partners, this is the first time they’ve been able to get into a value-based care (VBC) arrangement and negotiating the contract is one piece, but performing is the other,” says Tasha Scott, Senior Vice President of Performance at Yuvo.

Yuvo serves as a true collaborator, working closely with partners to identify opportunities to strengthen their business, ensuring FQHCs can maximize the benefits of value-based care and achieve their ultimate goal of entering a contract: shared savings to expand their capacity. 

Since joining in partnership with Yuvo, 100% of FQHC partners have entered new value-based contracts with payers they did not have access to prior.

Discovery and co-development of a customized plan

Each FQHC has its own impressive strengths, so together we create a thorough and personalized assessment that informs their own tailored action plan. Within that plan, Yuvo and FQHC partners review key areas, such as standard operations, HEDIS quality metrics, risk adjustment, and care management – and this helps identify gaps or obstacles in operations, technology, coding, performance, and opportunities for improved performance.

While the action plan acts as a guiding roadmap – and covers everything from accurate provider lists and coding gaps to utilization rates and patient outreach – it is tailored to each partner. Depending on a partner’s evolving needs, preferences, processes, or goals, it can change throughout the year. For example, Boriken Neighborhood Health Center is actively reengineering their clinical and operations teams, so their action plan will be adjusted accordingly. 

Lynae Picou, MSHCT, BSN, RN, Performance Manager at Yuvo, explains that she regularly meets with partners to review the plan and make adjustments, but most importantly, “listen to what partners are saying, identify short and long-term goals, and bring this information back to Yuvo’s domain leaders so we can support them and achieve their desired outcomes.”

“Our job is to understand roadblocks,” says Trenair Royal MHA, PMP, PCMH CCE, Performance Manager at Yuvo. “In addition to identifying and completing action items, we’re building agile and dynamic teams internally so we can collectively support the FQHCs that are understaffed and under-resourced.”

Curated patient profiles, conveniently in the EHR 

Yuvo uses seamless tech integrations to collect, analyze, and operationalize data, equipping our providers with a complete patient profile at the point of care. It also drives patient engagement, risk adjustment, quality improvement, and care management. 

The EHR-integrated, provider-enablement technology provided by Yuvo gives FQHCs access to claims data, patient health history, admissions discharges, and transfer (ADT) data from multiple sources directly in their EHR. This has helped our partners discover open care gaps among patients, make more informed decisions, and do more in less time. 

Having real-time, actionable insights at the point of care has been transformative for many FQHCs – including Joseph P. Addabbo Family Health Center. Equipped with a full view of their patients’ health, the team at Addabbo is able to optimize their time with the patient, boosting efficiency and leading to a 33% increase in care gaps addressed at the patient visit and a 20% increase in care gap closure.

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“Adopting the VIM Population Health Platform has been a transformative step for our organization. The platform’s robust data capabilities have empowered our providers to make more informed clinical decisions, ultimately enhancing the quality of care we deliver to our patients. We are excited about the potential of this tool to continue improving health outcomes for our community.”

- Ari Benjamin, MD and Chief Medical Officer at Joseph P. Addabbo Family Health Center

Hands-on support and expert guidance on VBC performance

When FQHCs partner with Yuvo, they gain a team of dedicated experts who can provide guidance, coaching, one-on-one education sessions, and support with population health analytics, among other areas. This is particularly beneficial for FQHCs who are consistently constrained by limited staffing, funding and resources.  

For example, after Yuvo’s Population Health Team discovered frequent scheduling gaps within one of our partner’s operations – and seeing a large number of patients canceling appointments without rescheduling –we saw an opportunity to provide hands-on help to the FQHC team that was already stretched to their limits. One of Yuvo’s care navigators picked up the phone and made direct calls to patients to reschedule them. They have since introduced the organization to Artera Digital Outreach, a platform that supports multi-language text messaging that is simple and consistent. 

This initiative has helped numerous partners, including Joseph P. Addabbo Family Health Center (Addabbo), a partner that already has a digital outreach system but has been able to reduce the burden of staff shortages by shifting some of the workload to Yuvo’s digital outreach platform.

Yuvo also works with an FQHC partner to support transition-of-care patients. Using claims data, Yuvo is notified when patients are released from the hospital or emergency department and will send direct patient outreach with the aim of getting that patient seen by a provider within seven days. This proactive approach alleviates the burden on the FQHC and helps close care gaps for high utilization patients.

Augmented support for risk, quality and care management

Working with population health data and leaning on trends, Yuvo has been able to identify opportunities for improvement and provide the tools and resources needed to assist FQHC partners with care coordination, patient outreach, community-based engagement, and so much more. 

“Yuvo has been incredibly supportive of Metro, not only in moving forward in terms of the value based conversation, but also supportive in terms of challenges that we've had, issues with our workforce, listening to the concerns that our providers have about adding more into what their day-to-day experience is… really being supportive in terms of the challenges that we face on a day-to-day basis.”

- Rita Bilello, DDS, Former Chief Executive Officer, Metro Community Health Center

This work is delivering tangible results. From 2023 to 2024, Yuvo’s FQHC partners together achieved an overall 16% reduction in emergency department usage, 14% reduction in potentially preventable ED visits and 29% reduction in inpatient visits. 

One of Yuvo’s crucial roles is connecting the dots among various service providers within the ecosystem of organizations serving under-resourced communities. Recently, we entered into a partnership with God’s Love We Deliver, a community-based organization that provides free, medically-tailored meals to people with life-altering illnesses. We understand that coordination can be time consuming, so our team handles identifying and contacting eligible patients and referring them to God’s Love We Deliver, who then takes over ensuring meal delivery on an ongoing basis. 

In addition to direct outreach and connecting patients to other organizations within a social care network, the Yuvo Health team works with partners to plan and optimize their community events. For example, we boosted payer support for breast cancer screening events at Addabbo this fall—adding to the comprehensive strategy that has already resulted in increasing the Breast Cancer Screening score from 57% to 61% among eligible patients in year one of contracting.

Next, Yuvo is planning to work with Aizer Health Center on events that engage families and ultimately increase the number of children receiving child wellness visits—a key opportunity for Aizer.  

Collaboration with other FQHCs 

Though they are key players in the space, FQHC partners have long been left out of prominent value-based care discussions. That’s why Yuvo Health is determined to give them a seat at the table and empower them to share their valuable insights and experiences. 

As part of the Yuvo Health Independent Practice Association (IPA), Yuvo encourages FQHC leaders to develop mutually-beneficial referral relationships and engage in open discussions around experiences and insights. 

There are many bright spots and lessons learned to share 

• The Addabbo team’s experience integrating VIM will help inform how Yuvo can help other FQHCs experience results even faster. 

• When Yuvo shared patient education materials with Callen-Lorde, their team noticed a key opportunity for more inclusive language—inspiring us to adjust the materials for all other FQHCs too.

• Aizer came into the Yuvo partnership with already impressive metrics around postpartum care. And Trenair describes being “blown away” by Boriken Neighborhood Health Center’s overall performance when she saw the team present at their 2024 Annual Quality Conference. The workflows and best practices behind their results can spark new ideas and success across the IPA. 

“As a member of the Yuvo Health IPA, we now have the ability to partner and network with other, like-minded FQHCs. We have already begun independently sharing best practices with our fellow IPA partners.”

- Anthony Fortenberry, RN, Chief Population Health Officer, Callen-Lorde

Immediate, reliable revenue and shared savings opportunities

“We help to get FQHCs credit for the work they’re already doing,” Tasha says – and this has proven true, with many FQHC partners having earned shared savings within their first year of entering a value-based care contract. 

In typical shared savings models, FQHCs don’t often receive payments until eighteen months following the work—often following a painful and opaque reconciliation process. But with Yuvo, FQHC partners receive monthly, upfront VBC incentive payments for work that is in their control, and likely already happening. We also manage the contracts so our partners don’t have to. 

Related: FQHC VBC Incentive Program

While it’s a huge benefit and goal for many FQHCs, Yuvo also knows “value-based care goes beyond shared savings,” Lynae explains. “It’s about being cost-effective and improving patient outcomes.”

She goes on to explain that FQHC patients are often vulnerable and unengaged and they need consistent outreach to get connected with the health center. Working with Yuvo, FQHC partners don’t just get this support, they get connected to a team that truly recognizes and appreciates the vital role of the FQHC and the needs of their patients. 

“We never want to get lost in the data points. These aren’t just numbers; these are individual lives that we’re touching. Providing hands-on support to FQHCs allows them to continue providing the highest quality care.”

- Trenair Royal, Performance Manager, Yuvo Health

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Related: Read the latest Yuvo Health Annual Report for more on the partnerships between Yuvo Health and FQHCs.

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