News

Leading Community Care Hub picks Cumulus

Bay Aging and VAAACares® have chosen Cumulus for Virginia’s Community Care Hub. The Cumulus platform will be used to process incoming referrals, assign tasks to staff and partners, conduct client assessments, manage care plans, track activities, optimize billing, and monitor performance.

Cumulus will enhance success for clinical and management staff, along with health plan and provider partners. Cumulus is a cloud-based collaboration hub for multidisciplinary teams, enabling organizations and their partners to securely share information, automate workflows, fully optimize closed-loop social care referrals, conduct client assessments, and track outcomes regardless of which IT systems participants are using.

“Cumulus is a strategic choice for Bay Aging and VAAACares®. The Cumulus team understands what we do and how we do it – they have decades of experience working with HCBS programs. And the modern, secure Cumulus collaboration platform will transform how we’re able to add value for our health plan partners, our network of providers and the clients we serve together.”

–Kathy Vesley, Bay Aging CEO & President

The intuitively flexible Cumulus approach makes it easy for partners to participate – by using the hub directly or through interoperability with the Cumulus HL7 FHIR interface. Interoperability was a key factor for VAAACare’s decision. Cumulus embraces interoperability, offering partners multiple options to authenticate, including the HL7 FHIR SMART App Launch profile and the SMART backend service auth profile. Cumulus can also consume patient and referral information from a partners’ HL7 FHIR API.

“We’re thrilled to have been chosen by VAAACares®, one of the country’s premier and most successful Community Care Hubs. The care hub model enables a cutting-edge vision for improving healthcare outcomes by connecting health and social care partners together– the integrated, multidisciplinary approach that inspired the creation of Cumulus.”

–John Byer, Cumulus CEO

VAAACares® was established beginning in 2015 to develop the value proposition of a trusted, high-quality, cost-effective, community-based network for Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) and health systems to meet the Health-Related Social Needs (HRSNs) of their members. With multiple MCO contracts, VAAACares® has become a reliable and sought-after statewide community-based provider. Over 45,000 Medicare and Medicaid patients have been assisted by VAAACares®, to date. For this work, in 2017, VAAACares® received the John A. Hartford Foundation Business Innovation Award.

Cumulus will be used by VAAACares® for programs such as care coordination and Care Transitions Interventions under multiple payer contracts.

Bay Aging and VAAACares

As Virginia’s Community Care Hub VAAACares® is well positioned to contract with Managed Care Organizations, Health Systems, and other private-pay organizations to provide the much-needed HRSN programs and services critical for people of all ages as Virginia begins its next iteration of integrated Medicaid managed care: Cardinal Care.

Cumulus

Cumulus is the flexible collaboration hub that enables organizations, partners, and provider networks to securely share information, automate workflows among teams, assess clients, streamline social care referrals, and improve outcomes for the people they serve - even when organizations are using different IT systems. Inspired at its inception through work with Aging Ahead, Missouri’s largest Area Agency on Aging, Cumulus enables collaborations like multidisciplinary teams, grant initiatives, Community Care Hubs, ADRCs, elder justice collaboratives, and emergency response coordination.

USAging Aging Innovations & Achievement Awards

Cumulus is thrilled to become a sponsor of the USAging Aging Innovations & Achievement (AIA) Awards program. This prestigious award is a flagship program for USAging.

Cumulus is excited to help USAging showcase the initiatives of Area Agencies on Aging (AAAs) and Title VI Native American Aging Programs across the country. We join USAging in saluting all those who offered their initiatives for consideration.

Aging Innovations Awards recognize the most innovative programs among all nominations received and Aging Achievement Awards recognize the most contemporary, effective and replicable programs.

Annually, the awards are presented during the USAging Conference and Tradeshow. During the upcoming 48th Annual 2023 Conference and Tradeshow, in Salt Lake City, UT, programs will be honored with 16 engraved Aging Innovations Awards and 34 Aging Achievement Awards. In addition, Cumulus’ sponsorship helps enable the top-ranking programs to receive monetary awards. The Cumulus team looks forward to presenting checks to the top winners on stage during the conference General Session on Monday July 17.

“Cumulus team members have been avid supporters of AAAs and Title VI Native American Aging Programs for more than 20 years,” said Cumulus CEO John Byer. “Being a sponsor of the AIA program is one way we can help promote the success of the best HCBS providers anywhere – USAging members.”

Cumulus President Tom Laba added, “We’ve worked with AAAs and Title VI programs in more than 30 states over the years. For us, being a sponsor of the AIA program is about honoring the hard work and cutting-edge innovations the network exemplifies each day.”

To qualify for an award, programs must have been in operation between one and five years, receive minimal assistance from outside experts and demonstrate effective approaches in either offering new services or improving existing services. Awards criteria include demonstration of measurable results, such as cost savings, improved client service and enhanced staff productivity. The AIA Awards are open to USAging AAA and Title VI members only.

Highlights of all past Aging Innovations Award recipients are available in the USAging-members-only AIA clearinghouse.

USAging and NCOA Pick Cumulus for ACL National Vaccine Uptake Initiative

Cumulus has been chosen by USAging and the National Council on Aging (NCOA), empowering hundreds of community-based grantees nationwide to record, monitor and report on vaccine clinics and vaccinations, service delivery, education/outreach activities, and supportive services. Both organizations will use Cumulus for oversight and monitoring of their national efforts to increase vaccine uptake.

The Administration for Community Living (ACL) recently awarded USAging and NCOA a total of $125 million to rapidly increase the number of older adults and people with disabilities who receive the updated COVID-19 vaccine and annual flu vaccine.

USAging was awarded $75 million by ACL to establish and leverage partnerships and engagement with Centers for Independent Living, Area Agencies on Aging, state No Wrong Door Systems, Aging and Disability Resource Centers, other ACL-funded disability networks, and other community-based organizations that serve older adults and disabled people.

NCOA was awarded $50 million by ACL to build and leverage partnerships with senior centers, community centers, and local community- and faith-based organizations that reach older adults and people with disabilities.

Partnerships – between the two programs and across networks – are a central component of each grant. USAging and NCOA will build on their long history of collaboration to closely coordinate efforts to ensure their activities are complementary, rather than duplicative. Their parallel use of Cumulus is expected to enhance opportunities for collaboration and success.

Cumulus will provide community-based grantees across the country with an easy-to-use, secure and quickly deployed cloud platform to record, monitor and report on their grant-related activities and events. Cumulus is being configured specifically for the national ACL Vaccine Uptake Initiative, including the availability of survey forms in 15 languages and in compliance with Americans with Disability Act standards.

“The numbers say it all. There is a real need to ensure that older adults and people with disabilities get vaccinated,” said USAging CEO Sandy Markwood. “The pandemic has taught us that older adults and people with disabilities, particularly those from historically marginalized and underserved communities, face the highest risk of severe illness and hospitalization due to COVID-19. Given this and the heightened flu season, the time is now to dedicate all the resources possible to reduce the barriers to vaccination that these communities have experienced.”

“There’s no time to waste in ensuring everyone gets these lifesaving vaccines,” said Ramsey Alwin, NCOA president and CEO. “Our local partners in the aging network are trusted messengers in their communities. We will work in partnership with them to ensure all have access to these important vaccines.”

Cumulus’ powerful collaboration and dashboarding features will help grantees maximize success for themselves, while positioning USAging and NCOA to streamline their oversight of and reporting on the rapid, national implementation of this crucial initiative.

Cumulus and its partners are final winners of the Administration for Community Living’s Social Care Referrals Challenge. The three-phase challenge was a competition to identify IT solutions to support health care systems and community-based organizations to facilitate social care referrals and information sharing between organizations, systems, and platforms – a perfect fit for Cumulus.

Cumulus participated in the challenge as part of the Missouri Aging Services Data Collaborative, comprised of Cumulus, the Missouri Association of Area Agencies on Aging (MA4), the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) Community Innovation & Action Center, and Long Term Care Innovation, Inc. (LTCI). The project successfully positioned Cumulus as an interoperability hub to facilitate information sharing between organizations, systems, and platforms. The project also developed the Aging Services Dataset and Interoperability Standards (ASDIS), which categorize and organize hundreds of commonly used data elements and can be used to exchange data between partners and payers, regardless of which existing data system or vendor they use.

In addition to winning the Phase 3 award, The Missouri Aging Services Collaborative team was also awarded the ACL Social Care Referrals Challenge Bonus Phase award for using machine learning technology to translate and match terms used in nationally recognized social risk screening tools with terms used by service providers. A demonstration of the project included mapping Gravity Project Food Insecurity data elements with Nutritional Risk Screening data elements for Older Americans Act programs as a baseline for reporting.

For more information, please see the official press release from ACL.

Join us at HCBS Conference 2022 in Washington, DC August 14 to 18

The Cumulus team is excited to participate in the nation’s premier Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) event. The HCBS Conference is Advancing States' national conference that annually brings together state, federal, and local policymakers as well as leaders who administer, manage, and deliver waiver and other HCBS programs. The purpose of the HCBS Conference is to share practices and policies that improve state systems delivering long-term services and supports (LTSS) for all ages and abilities.

Please visit us at Booth #603 in the Exhibit Hall. We look forward to seeing you!

Missouri picks Cumulus for APS/AAA Direct Services

The Missouri Association of Area Agencies on Aging (MA4) chose Cumulus for a statewide collaboration initiative to connect Adult Protective Services clients with HCBS. This project is a collaboration of MA4 and Missouri Adult Protective Services (APS) to deliver services and supports to clients of APS, with a goal of helping those clients remain in the least restrictive environment and improve their quality of life and health. The Cumulus hub is connecting 300+ Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services APS and AAA workers with rapid referrals and collaboration.

Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) APS workers will use Cumulus to create service requests for clients they’re working with. Once approved by designated staff at the DHSS, Cumulus will automatically route the service request to the AAA serving the appropriate geographic area. AAA staff will retrieve the service requests through the Cumulus hub and services will begin.

Even though organizations are using separate IT systems, the Cumulus hub enables them to share information, communicate, collaborate and improve outcomes for vulnerable adults needing important services and supports.

Join us at USAging Annual Conference and Tradeshow in Austin, TX July 10 to 12

Cumulus will be at USAging in Austin! AAAs need to collaborate with partners more than ever, including securely merging social care data with healthcare data. Cumulus helps you connect, share and collaborate quickly. Visit us at Booth 602 to how Cumulus is a game-changer.

Come learn how Missouri’s AAAs are adopting Cumulus as their collaboration and interoperability hub. See how Cumulus can help AAAs quickly establish collaboration projects linking partners using different IT systems - to share information, communicate, make referrals and improve outcomes.

ACL Challenge Grant inspires new Aging Services Data Set and Interoperability Standards

As the collaboration hub for ACL Challenge Grant winner Missouri Aging Services Data Collaborative (MASDC), Cumulus is pushing the interoperability envelope on behalf of AAAs. To encourage data sharing with healthcare, state agencies and community partners Cumulus and MASDC developed a groundbreaking set of standards to help AAAs share data in a uniform way nationwide.

MASDC’s ground-breaking Aging Services Data Set and Interoperability Standard (ASDIS) — one of the first open data standards for social services — demonstrates that investment in social-care oriented interoperability efforts is essential to building an ecology of services that can encompass the social determinants of health (SDOH) alongside other critical measures of community health and wellbeing.

ASDIS is designed to complement FHIR, including eLTSS and Gravity, while also providing a foundation for data sharing within daily aging service provision (even if it never interacts with healthcare). ASDIS is also IT system-agnostic – which means that every AAA and aging services organization could arrange to exchange data with partners and payers regardless of which existing data system or vendor they use. ASDIS consists of more than 450 unique data elements (not counting assessment data) within 24 commonly understood categories, including service authorizations, activities/tasks, claims-related elements, disability services data elements, and ICD-10 code tracking.

Missouri AAA uses Cumulus during COVID Health Emergency

The Cumulus collaboration platform grew directly from a need in the spring of 2020 for community partners to rapidly coordinate their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Like community-based organizations nationwide, Aging Ahead, an Area Agency on Aging in the greater St. Louis area, faced daunting challenges as local communities and businesses went into lockdown. The demand for some services like home delivered meals skyrocketed, while delivery models for in-home services changed overnight. Using the ad hoc tools available, Aging Ahead and its partners coordinated outreach and service delivery, providing reassurance and services to socially and physically isolated shared clients across a huge geographic area. Relying on email, phone calls, spreadsheets, disconnected data systems and old-fashioned ingenuity they made it work – thousands of seniors and people with disabilities were served during that crucial time.

Once the initial surge of COVID-19 cases began to recede, Aging Ahead and its key partners realized they needed to prepare for potential outbreaks later in 2020 and 2021. “As we were scrambling to coordinate and collaborate with our partners in March and April,” said Aging Ahead CEO Lisa Knoll, “I knew we had to find a better way.”

Aging Ahead envisioned an innovative collaboration hub enabling community partners to rapidly assemble around a common objective – and Cumulus is the result. Cumulus integrates data from partners' case management systems and utilizes automated task management to optimize coordination of the groups’ COVID-19 community response efforts.

Quick and efficient