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As the first safety-net hospital-owned Provider Service Network (PSN), South Florida Community Care Network’s vision is simple—to help promote healthy people in healthy communities with local access to health care. That vision is jointly shared by the partnership behind the South Florida Community Care Network (SFCCN), Broward Health and Memorial Healthcare System. Each has a long history of ensuring everyone in the community gets the right care, at the right time, in the right place.

 
“A portion of the missions of both health systems indicate they are here to provide quality healthcare to the community,” says John Benz, president and CEO of South Florida Community Care Network (SFCCN). “Both entities recognize SFCCN is a vehicle for which to facilitate population health throughout Broward County. Our parent hospitals, through SFCCN, are living their missions. That is the true value of SFCCN.”
 
SFCCN is celebrating a milestone anniversary this year—its 15th. From 2000-2013, it stayed in that same structure as a PSN with a third partner (Jackson Health System in Miami-Dade County) as a non-full risk model. Following the state Medicaid reform last year, when 3.6 million Floridians moved to a managed care model, SFCCN became full risk and won the bid for Broward County, and Jackson Health left the partnership to avoid any unintended risk.
 
Prior to this, for nearly a decade, SFCCN had minimal membership, serving Miami-Dade and Broward counties until 2008, when one of the proprietary plans in the region left Broward County suddenly and all of its members were redistributed. SFCCN instantly grew from around 10,000 lives collectively to nearly 30,000. Its next major growth occurred after it began working with Florida Department of Health’s Children’s Medical Services (CMS) to provide services for CMS enrolled Medicaid children. Today, their enrollment, which include Medicaid, CMS and others, exceeds 100,000 lives.
 
“Our growth has been based on our ability to do our job successfully and serve our population well, and ensure our members receive the highest quality of care,” says Jessica Lerner, senior vice president and Chief Operating Officer of SFCCN.
 
In the short term, SFCCN wishes to establish an infrastructure to achieve the top quartile scores in quality satisfaction, access and clinical effectiveness. Long term, according to Benz, SFCCN wants to be a vehicle for population health throughout Broward County. “Overall, you have to be at the top of the class in order to support and accomplish your mission, which for us is to care for the people in Broward County.”
 
As healthcare reform continues to impact every sector of the health system, both Benz and Lerner see some opportunities and challenges for SFCCN moving forward. For Benz, the challenges are always about communications, whether it’s communications to engage the members, patients or providers.
 
“With the expansion of EHRs and EMRs as well as connectivity and information technology today, trying to keep up with the pace of change is really quite a challenge,” Benz says. “Once you know what it means to you—what do you with it? That involves the repositioning of the workforce to be a more effective targeted workforce toward the improvement of quality, satisfaction and clinical effectiveness. We sit here every day wondering how to better the delivery system and the back office support. It’s hard not to be able to implement it overnight.”
 
Lerner agrees and adds that the rapid pace in which the change of medical information is happening is also the biggest opportunity because it allows SFFCN to work more closely with the members and providers.
 
“Since we’re provider-owned, we are very attuned to provider needs and focus our efforts to empower and provide them with real-time information,” she explains.
 
Benz sees a unique opportunity at SFCCN to meet the challenges of healthcare expansion and meet the true needs of children with special needs and facilitate them getting the right delivery of services at the right time with the right physician.
 
“While we are challenged at times operationally, we are committed to this community for the long term,” he says. “We’re probably the best kept secret in the community. Our partners—the members, physicians and the hospitals—know us as a trusted entity. We’re locally owned, community-based and have the strong support of the overall delivery system from our two hospital districts and our physician community. We have many opportunities to take our existing partnerships to new heights.”