Cumulus launches Customer Council

Cumulus is pleased to announce the launch of its Customer Council. This initiative marks the next step forward in Cumulus' commitment to customer driven product innovation.

The Cumulus Customer Council will provide key insights and guidance, helping to inform Cumulus’ strategic and product roadmaps. The council will grow to include representatives from a range of customers.

Introducing our anchor members

Joining the Cumulus Customer Council as anchor members are industry leaders Lisa Knoll and Kathy Vesley. Both bring a wealth of experience and expertise that will greatly benefit the council, Cumulus, and its customers.

Lisa Knoll

Lisa Knoll is CEO of Aging Ahead, one of ten area agencies on aging in Missouri. With a focus on Social Determinants of Health, Aging Ahead’s mission is to support individuals through the journey of aging and assure all individuals have opportunities to age with honor and dignity.

“Cumulus is increasingly becoming central to our success. Our state AAA Association (ma4) relies on Cumulus for our Missouri APS Direct Services program and partnered with Cumulus to be a winner of the Administration for Community Living’s Social Care Referrals Challenge, leading to our implementation of the new FHIR®-based Aging Services Data Set and Interoperability Standards (ASDIS). Aging Ahead is ready to go live with Cumulus for our large Veteran-Directed Care program. Next up in Cumulus will be our Standardized Intake and Uniform Assessment initiatives. Cumulus’ modern interoperability capabilities are strategically important to all of our efforts. Having a voice through the Cumulus Customer Council will serve our mutual success and ensure that other CBOs know about, and have access to, the same game changing technology.”

–Lisa Knoll, CEO Aging Ahead

Ms. Knoll has a long track record of innovative leadership. To tackle the challenge of attracting people to traditional senior centers, Knoll launched the Choice program in 2014 to bring programs, services, and meals to locations where older adults naturally congregate, such as libraries, YMCAs, and grocery stores. Choice programs are now identified as community focal points under the U.S. Administration for Community Living.

During the early days of the Covid pandemic, Knoll again spurred innovation by inspiring the creation of the Cumulus platform to help diverse organizations coordinate services quickly and securely.

In 2023, Ms. Knoll was recognized with the Trailblazer in Aging Award by the National Council on Aging, which recognizes an individual or organization who has created innovative solutions to improve the health and economic security of older adults in the community.

Kathy Vesley

Kathy Vesley is President and CEO of Bay Aging, a Virginia area agency on aging, and VAAACares®, a statewide Community Care Hub recognized as a trusted statewide collaborative performing care coordination to address health-related social needs (HRSN). VAAACares® is well positioned to expand its contracts with MCOs, 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.

“As a large Community Care Hub, we manage programs for multiple payers across a broad range of services. We began using Cumulus for Care Transitions Intervention work and are aggressively expanding to include Veteran-Directed Care and care coordination, including medication management in home- and community-based settings. Cumulus’ interoperability features are core to our strategies. I’m supporting the Cumulus Customer Council because I know our mutual success will help us improve outcomes for our payers and the members we serve together.”

–Kathy Vesley, President and CEO VAAACares

Vesley joined Bay Aging in 1998 as Chief Operating Officer following nearly two decades in leadership positions in state government, including the Acting Director of the Department for Deaf and Hard of Hearing and Deputy Commissioner for the Virginia Department for the Aging.

Vesley was instrumental in establishing VAAACares®, developing the value proposition of a trusted, high-quality, cost-effective, community-based network for Managed Care Organizations and health systems to meet the Health-Related Social Needs (HRSNs) of their members. Additionally, she successfully advocated for Virginia’s capitated Medicaid Program to offer the opportunity for Area Agencies on Aging to provide HRSN services for people not only living in the community but also in long term-care facilities.

Ms. Vesley led successful negotiations with multiple Managed Care Organizations (MCOs), and painstaking attention to delivering consistent, quality services resulted in the VAAACares® partnership becoming 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. In 2023, USAging awarded Ms. Vesley the Excellence in Leadership Award in recognition of her efforts to serve vulnerable populations.

About Cumulus

Cumulus is the secure cloud-based collaboration hub that bridges medical and social care teams for intakes, screenings, assessments and referrals with automated workflows. Agnostic about the EHRs and case management systems used by collaborating partners, Cumulus embraces interoperability and is a leader in the adoption of FHIR standards for securely sharing social care and long-term services and supports (LTSS) data.

Inspired at its inception through work with Aging Ahead, Missouri’s largest Area Agency on Aging, Cumulus enables multidisciplinary teams and networks of partners to securely share information, collaborate, assess clients automate workflows among teams, and optimize closed-loop social care referrals.