FQHC SOLUTIONS
Make coordinated care easier to put into practice.
Connect leadership, workflows, supervision, and patient conversations across the roles and sites of your federally qualified health center.
For health center executives, medical and behavioral health leaders, operations teams, and supervisors.
THE REALITY OF THE WORK
The patient experience crosses roles and handoffs.
A patient’s next step may involve the front desk, a clinician, behavioral health, care coordination, and a follow-up conversation. Each team brings a different responsibility. Shared expectations help people understand how those responsibilities fit together.
A handoff without a clear owner
A referral or follow-up leaves one team assuming another will contact the patient.
A plan that does not fit
A recommended change conflicts with the patient’s work hours, cost concerns, family responsibilities, or priorities.
Recurring workflow questions
Staff work hard to compensate for unclear roles or inconsistent routines across teams and sites.
UNDERSTAND BEFORE CHOOSING A RESPONSE
Connect the conversation with the conditions around it.
When follow-through is difficult, examine what the patient understood, what each role is responsible for, and what practical support is available. The next useful step may involve communication, a clearer handoff, or a workflow decision.
AN ILLUSTRATIVE SITUATION
What is happening?
A patient leaves with a referral but is unsure who will contact them or how to arrange the next appointment.
What needs attention?
Check the handoff, ownership of follow-up, the patient’s understanding, and barriers to taking the next step.
What could we try?
Agree who will do what, practice checking the patient’s understanding, and review how the handoff worked.
Learn from what happens. Review the response with the people involved and adjust the next step. The situation helps us decide what support is useful.
FOUR CONNECTED AREAS OF SUPPORT
Start with the work you want to strengthen.
You can begin with one area. We connect the support around it where relevant to your organization and the agreed engagement.
Leadership
Clarify what access, respect, coordination, and accountability should mean in daily decisions across teams and sites.
Systems
Examine role clarity, handoffs, meeting routines, and practical supports for coordinated communication and follow-through.
Supervision
Use preparation and feedback to help staff reason through recurring issues and recognize when a workflow needs leadership attention.
Motivational interviewing
Build on existing MI experience for brief patient conversations about priorities, ambivalence, and change, while attending to practical barriers.
PRACTICE WITH PURPOSE
A recommended change feels unrealistic to the patient.
During a brief visit, a patient explains that cost and work hours make a proposed next step difficult. The team needs to understand what kind of help would be useful.
Illustrative learning example.
Build on the MI your team already knows.
Your team may already use MI. We help connect that experience with brief visits, competing priorities, and the practical realities of patient care. Practice and feedback focus on what a response is intended to make possible.
Understand
Explore the patient’s priorities and the practical difficulty before assuming a lack of motivation.
Respond
Distinguish a need for information or assistance from an opportunity to explore the patient’s own reasons for change.
Connect
Check the next step and who is responsible for any follow-up across the care team.
Practice can include examining a situation, trying a response, and using feedback to decide what to do next. The scenarios and focus are agreed with your team.
Practice Lab: free exploration, no sign-in required. Opens in a new tab.
MAKE PROGRESS OBSERVABLE
What would you want to see in daily work?
These are examples of the changes we can help you work toward and review in your setting.
Patients understand the next step
The plan and any barriers are discussed in language that makes sense to the person.
Handoffs have clear ownership
Teams know who will act, what information is needed, and how to follow up.
Patterns reach the right decision maker
Supervision helps distinguish a skill to practice from a working condition that needs attention.
A PRACTICAL STARTING POINT
Start where coordination is breaking down.
A handoff may need both clearer leadership expectations and a change in how work is organized. A team may instead need focused MI practice or supervision support. We discuss the situation with you before agreeing on the focus and format.
Explore the situation
Tell us what you are noticing, who is involved, what your team already knows, and what you would like to be different.
Agree the work
We discuss the audience, priorities, format, timing, and specific support before an engagement begins.
Connect learning with practice
Where included in the agreed scope, coaching or organizational support can help you reflect on application and make adjustments.
A short description is enough to begin. We agree scope, schedule, and any deliverables with you.
EXPLORE AMIGA