Abstract:
Organizations across the Medi-Cal ecosystem are navigating growing financial pressure, workforce challenges, and operational complexity. While the goals of CalAIM remain unchanged, the path forward increasingly requires organizations to sustain and strengthen implementation efforts within existing constraints. This webinar explored practical strategies that health care organizations, managed care plans, county systems, and community-based organizations can use to continue advancing coordinated, equitable care for Medi-Cal members.
About this event:
CalAIM is transforming how California’s Medi-Cal program supports people with complex medical and social needs through Enhanced Care Management (ECM), Community Supports, and population health approaches designed to improve outcomes and advance health equity. Across California, organizations are continuing to operationalize these initiatives while adapting to fiscal uncertainty, workforce shortages, and uneven operational capacity.
For many leaders, the pressing challenge is determining how to sustain and scale implementation efforts within the current environment.
In this webinar, Jim Hickman, founder of Hickman Strategies and a CalAIM subject matter expert, sharde insights from his work supporting county systems, managed care plans, providers, and healthcare innovators across California. Drawing from real-world implementation experiences, this session briefly framed the current Medi-Cal landscape before focusing on practical solutions and leadership strategies that organizations can apply.
Participants explored:
- Actionable approaches and cross-sector collaboration strategies that can help organizations continue advancing CalAIM’s goals despite ongoing uncertainty.
- Emerging financing and contracting approaches that can help stabilize implementation efforts.
- Lessons and promising practices emerging from county-level CalAIM implementation efforts across California.
This session was intended for:
Leaders working in health plan, county agencies, provider organizations, community-based organizations, and other partner organizations working to improve care and outcomes for Medi-Cal beneficiaries through CalAIM implementation and cross-sector collaboration.
At the end of the session, participants were able to:
- Understand how current fiscal and operational realities are affecting CalAIM implementation efforts.
- Identify practical strategies for sustaining ECM, Community Supports, and cross-sector partnerships.
- Recognize operational and financial approaches that can strengthen long-term sustainability.
- Apply actionable ideas to support coordinated, equity-centered care within your own organizations and communities.
The speaker was:
Jim Hickman, Founder, Hickman Strategies; PATH CPI Facilitator, Camden Coalition; Venture Partner, Suncoast Ventures
Recording:
Resources:
Responses to questions from the webinar
The Readiness Architecture worksheet The four-layer grid from the presentation, as a two-page worksheet you can score your own organization against
The Equity Cliff: Federal Medicaid Cuts Are About To Undo California’s Health System Gains, Jim Hickman, Abner Mason and Jeremy Cantor, Health Affairs Forefront
CalAIM Field Notes, On-the-ground dispatches from California’s Medicaid transformation
