Practice Support Services

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services Division of Health Benefits and NC AHEC offers two monthly evening webinar series to help prepare providers, practice managers, and quality managers for Medicaid Managed Care, going live on July 1, 2021.

Hosted by Shannon Dowler, MD, chief medical officer of the NC Division of Health Benefits, these two series will feature changing subtopics on Medicaid Managed Care on the first Thursday of each month and Clinical Quality on the third Thursday of each month through June 2021.

Register or Get Series Event Information

Beginning in December 2020, a new Medicaid Managed Care webinar series on the Advanced Medical Home (AMH) program will provide Medicaid primary care practice staff and clinicians with more information on North Carolina’s AMH model and how to function at the highest AMH Tier possible when Medicaid Managed Care went live in July 2021.

The series is designed to support practice managers, quality improvement professionals, care coordinators, and others within your practice responsible for meeting the NC Medicaid AMH Tier 2 or 3 requirements. This series will occur on the second Thursday of each month, beginning in December 2020 and continuing through May 2021.

Register or Get Series Event Information

Advanced Medical Home Resources

This online series contains four learning modules that address the unique role that community health workers play when helping clients with substance use disorders. Faculty for these courses are from various disciplines and currently care for individuals dealing with opioid addiction. These include behavioral health specialists, peer support specialists, community navigators, primary care physicians, and emergency medical services. Courses in this series are free of charge.

Choose a course below to begin registration

• OECHW 1: Substance Use and Co-Occurring Disorders
• OECHW 2: Stigma and Stereotyping
• OECHW 3: The Role of the Peer Support Specialist and How to Integrate This Skill Set in Communities
• OECHW 4: Working with the Medical Community

NC AHEC Practice Support has partnered with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services and Division of Health Benefits to help healthcare providers thrive under Medicaid Managed Care. Practice Support provides no-cost assistance with education and issue resolution, quality improvement, clinical workflow redesign, Advanced Medical Home tier support, EHR optimization, telehealth integration, HIE training and integration, operational needs assessments, revenue cycle management, Tailored Care Management education and issue resolution, and Community Health Worker integration. More information is also available on the NC Medicaid website for providers.

The North Carolina Health Information Exchange Authority (NC HIEA) is pleased to announce a partnership with the North Carolina Area Health Education Centers (NC AHEC), housed at the University of North Carolina, to increase training opportunities for healthcare providers participating in the state-designated HIE, NC HealthConnex.

As NC HealthConnex has rapidly added Medicaid providers to its statewide network, the NC HIEA aims to train and prepare those providers better to utilize the HIE in their clinical workflows. Together, NC HIEA and NC AHEC plan to provide ongoing education opportunities to participants of NC HealthConnex through approved funding by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The NC AHEC Program has 35 practice support coaches trained to work with providers and clinic staff across the state. These coaches have helped more than 6,000 providers at 1,400 practices move toward promoting interoperability (formerly meaningful use) of their electronic health records in nearly 600 practices.

The NC HIEA has historically worked with NC AHEC to ensure this team is up to speed on NC HealthConnex recruiting efforts and technical features to share regularly with their practices. Created by the North Carolina General Assembly (NCGS 90-414.7), NC HealthConnex is the state-designated health information exchange managed by the North Carolina Health Information Exchange Authority (NC HIEA) housed within the NC Department of Information Technology. Additionally, legislation requires that healthcare providers who receive State funds for healthcare services (e.g., Medicaid, State Health Plan) connect to NC HealthConnex by specific dates. For more information, visit www.nchealthconnex.gov.

NC HealthConnex is a state-designated health information exchange that enables one to manage population health and clinical outcomes effectively. Let us help you navigate this platform and its new features as they roll out. With NC HealthConnex, you can access your patients’ comprehensive records across multiple providers and review labs, diagnostics, history, allergies, medications, and more. As a result, you can eliminate duplicative testing, make more efficient and accurate diagnoses, and improve coordination across all levels of care.

In-person and virtual training can be scheduled with any of the nine AHEC regions. NC HIEA and NC AHEC are collaborating to build a training library of go-at-your-own-pace video training modules to provide NC HealthConnex participants with valuable training and use cases to support adopting and utilizing the state-designated HIE.

The North Carolina AHEC Practice Support Program is an approved project of the North Carolina Maintenance of Certification (NC MOC) Program and an approved sponsor of the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) Multi-specialty Portfolio Program (MSPP). Most ABMS Member Boards recognize this participation as an option to meet Part IV requirements. The National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants (NCCPA) also accepts NC MOC credit for physician assistants.

Through this approval, physicians and physician assistants who work with an NC AHEC Practice Support coach to improve patient care will meet the requirements of their specialty boards to maintain certification in their specialties. To qualify, physicians and physician assistants must have actively worked with an NC AHEC Practice Support coach for at least six months to improve patient outcomes/experiences or positively impact other aspects of their practice.

NC AHEC and Alliant Quality are working together to help small practices in North Carolina understand and successfully participate in the CMS Quality Payment Program (QPP) and the Merit-based Incentive Program (MIPS). This support for QPP and MIPS is available to you at no cost. You can access free online resources at qpp.cms.gov or email us for local, in-state help.