SB 1580 required the Oregon Health Authority to assign an Innovator Agent (IA) to each Coordinated Care Organization (CCO). IA’s have worked with CCO’s since 2012. Since beginning the second phase of innovation with CCO 2.0 in 2020, they are advancing local work with CCO’s with a focus on health equity, Tribal relationships, mental health and substance use delivery services through our behavioral health system, integrating health and social determinates of health work, and emerging statewide initiatives such as Oregon’s new 1115 Medicaid Demonstration Waiver. By having IAs in local communities throughout Oregon, the OHA assures that local voice, via a broad variety of partners, is elevated and captured to affect statewide policy and legislation, incorporating local understanding, engagement and implementation across a variety of communities.
Innovator Agents understand the health needs of the region, the strengths and gaps of the health resources in the CCO and articulate these needs and gaps to OHA to ensure statewide and local policy and legislation development, systems change and coordination. They look at best practices and strategies for health care transformation in Oregon and nationally and support uptake and innovation of these practices on the local level through policy and practice research and implementation, advancing equity-based local decision making and facilitation of cross-agency and cross- partner efforts. They prioritize elevating Oregon Health Plan member voice within CCO’s operations and, within the OHA, connecting OHA to better understand local community strengths, needs, and gaps and linking CCO – OHA – and community initiatives.
IA’s act as quasi local experts in the communities where the CCO they work with are located. They use relationships to connect OHA, local community organizations, and the CCO’s they work with and ensure coordination across these groups. They help good news travel faster by sharing innovation and successful practices with other CCO’s, with the OHA, and with national audiences. They play a key role in leading OHA’s strategic priority of eliminating health inequalities by taking this statewide priority and working with CCO’s and local communities to translate statewide priorities to local adaptation and implementation. In particular they elevate and ensure that communities in Oregon who face health inequalities because of their race, ethnicity, language, disability, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, social class, intersections among these communities or identities, or other socially determined circumstances are engaged in CCO and community health work.