The Putting Care at the Center Meeting Builds Community and Encourages Cross-Sector Collaboration

The Putting Care at the Center meeting, which will be held December 5-7 in Chicago, Illinois, helps build a community among people who are working to improve care for patients with complex health needs so they can collaborate and share best practices, explained Victor Murray, director for care management initiatives at the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers.

Transcript

There are a number of different ways communities and organizations are delivering care to complex patients. What is the importance of Putting Care at the Center, being held December 5-7 in Chicago, Illinois, which brings all those people together?

For me, that event, Putting Care at the Center, is about building community. And so, as individuals in our care model, we emphasize people’s support system. How do we look for individuals who are already there, whether it’s a relative or family member, a friend, the person next door, the person at the corner store, and highlight those individuals and help to support those individuals so that once we’re out of the picture, the person still has that network that they can continue to rely on.

And so, I think this convening is important in that it builds out our network. It’s just not a Camden-specific issue. This is a broader issue that’s happening in various parts of the country and various parts of town, cities, that might feel isolated in many respects, when you’re engaged in these problems, which may feel overwhelmingly huge.

So, these forums bring those communities together to think about what are the best practices? How can we systematically approach this in a very methodical, strategic, and just practical way in order to break down some of these siloes and really share these best practices across our communities.

Because there is a lot of great work being done, but it’s not always emphasized or highlighted. So, this is a way that can be done.

What are you looking forward to the most at this year's Putting Care at the Center?

I’m looking forward to conversation just around more cross-sector collaboration. So, again, going back to the point about breaking down siloes—you know, traditionally healthcare sits here, social services sits here, and there’s really not much talk or there is talk and it’s only around individual cases.

So, there’s a lot of conversation nationally and at this convening that will be about: how do we start to have that communication pathway structured in a way that can meet the needs of not just our systems, but individuals? How do we increase data sharing? What are the things that we need to do in terms of data-sharing partnerships? The legality of it? So, very high level, but also very practical ways that we can advance the movement.

That’s something that I’m looking forward to. I feel that oftentimes it’s a family reunion of folks who are just doing great work and just getting that energy, and just hearing the great work that folks are doing is just very encouraging. It helps me and others to come back to your community and say, “Alright, there are others aligned; how can we move forward together?”