State Based Experience
OUR SERVICES
Healthcare Workforce Solutions
As post-pandemic realities intensify the demand for healthcare, it’s created the workforce crisis of a generation. Staffing shortages prompted an unstable workforce and caused healthcare costs to skyrocket. To address this challenge, DIRA Partners leverages their 20+ years of expertise to design Medicaid financing solutions that strengthen recruitment and retention strategies, fund critical workforce training programs, lift wages and improve benefits. As part of this, DIRA has testified in legislative hearings, provides technical background for state legislators and Governor teams, gathers candid input from the healthcare workforce to better understand their experiences, and works with County and regional elected officials to advance meaningful workforce solutions. These programs utilize allowable sources of state general revenue to garner additional federal Medicaid funding – securing millions of new funding to help address the workforce crisis.
Our strategy in action: DIRA Partners joined forces with the State, labor and the nursing home industry to design an innovative health insurance program for long-term healthcare workers. DIRA’s unique ability to speak the language of disparate stakeholders, interpret and identify synergistic objectives, and work together to assess critical issues and systems gaps, empowered the collective organizations to blend their investment. As a result, the State’s investment was matched by federal Medicaid funding, combined with existing employer funding, which improved the affordability and accessibility of health coverage for nursing home workers. The workforce has described the program as “transformational” in terms of affordability, while the industry has made significant strides in recruitment and retention efforts.
Medicaid Financing
Medicaid financing is the impetus behind DIRA’s healthcare solutions with integrity and impact. We blend technical excellence with political, financial and campaign policy expertise to rally stakeholders around a shared purpose, fund solutions and create real systems change. Our carefully crafted recommendations can withstand political scrutiny and garner approval from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS.gov). Through it all, our mission is to be your most trusted advocate, so when the hand you’re dealt isn’t advancing, we equip you with new playing cards in the form of visionary ideas, actionable insights and novel strategies to embolden state and federal governments to say yes to reimagined concepts. This process repeats until you get your win.
Our strategy in action: DIRA leaders successfully increased a hospital’s Medicaid rates to its average commercial rates—making it one of the first in the nation to do so—and produced an additional $600M per year on an ongoing basis for the participating hospital system.
Medicaid and Healthcare Strategy
As part of our Medicaid and healthcare strategy services, DIRA provides guidance, support and value – from idea conception to implementation. We harness our innate knowledge of Medicaid and healthcare to align organizational objectives. No matter how ambitious, we break big ideas into manageable, methodical steps. Asking ourselves, what is the first step to making this happen? What can we do today to achieve our end goal tomorrow? Is this quest worth exploring? If so, what’s the next step? And what is the step after that? With a future-focused mindset, we can guide you down the necessary path.
Our strategy in action: A major hospital system engaged DIRA Partners to help them understand their position and relationship to Medicaid in their region. As part of our deep exploration and data-centric assessment, we discovered the hospital had a reputational problem related to Medicaid, even though it was the second largest provider of Medicaid in the county. By establishing operational levers, analyzing market dynamics, and asking critical questions, we helped them understand their role and relationship in Medicaid, distill their unique differentiation and paved the way for strategic engagements with internal stakeholders and regional elected officials to further the access and equity goals of the health system. As part of that, DIRA designed a Medicaid strategy that clarified the hospital’s role in the county, took significant strides to create a meaningful partnership with the county health delivery system, laid the groundwork to overcome reputational challenges. Following DIRA’s direction, the hospital significantly improved their relationship with the county-owned Medicaid health plan, and secured buy-in from county health system leadership and administration.
