Braiding funding streams — when health care and social service organizations bring together funds from various sources to support a unified goal or program — is a promising strategy for maximizing financing to promote the delivery of services for people with complex health and social needs.

California’s CalAIM (California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal) initiative is creating new opportunities for organizations to tap into Medi-Cal funding to provide comprehensive, person-centered care and services. Yet, to do this effectively, social service organizations often need to braid Medi-Cal and non-Medi-Cal funding streams — a relatively new concept for many service-delivery organizations in California and across the country.

Researchers at the Center for Health Care Strategies conducted interviews with health care and social service organizations in California and produced this brief, Braiding Medicaid Funds to Support Person Centered Care: Lessons from Medi-Cal. It explores how organizations are braiding funding, identifies strategies for managing related challenges and risks, and highlights opportunities for health care payers to make it easier for organizations to braid funds. The brief also profiles three organizations that are braiding funds to advance person-centered care for the people they serve.

In an accompanying webinar, two community-based organizations explain how they braid funding streams within and outside Medi-Cal to deliver integrated whole-person care and the strategies they use to mitigate the risks of braiding. Watch the webinar.

Both the brief and the webinar were produced with support from CHCF.