The Power of Strategy at Riverside Community Health Foundation

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our customer interview webinar. Today, we are welcoming Lauren Randall, a health education and evaluation specialist for Riverside Community Health Foundation. She will be sharing her insights into how their organization manages strategy. Interviewing Lauren will be Ted Jackson, one of clearpoint Strategy's two founders. The audience will be muted for the duration of this webinar, but we encourage you to submit any questions into the Q and A tab without further delay. Ted, I'll go ahead and pass things on to you.

Thanks, Jenna. And Lauren, I really appreciate you joining us today. So tell me a little bit about Riverside Community Health.

Yes. So our health foundation is a nonprofit. It focuses primarily on community health, community engagement, and education. We're out of Riverside and we serve most of Riverside in the neighboring zip codes.

Okay, and so how did you start using clearpoint?

Yeah, so we received a grant from the state, their Transformative Climate Communities grant. This is where we work with eight local partners serving the east side of Riverside, just focusing on helping our community become more environmentally resilient.

Okay. Like, grants are a pretty good use case for clearpoint. So tell me, like, how you're leveraging the application now. Like, what problem are we helping to solve in grant management?

Yeah, so the grant is from the state. They want us to use an annual indicator report, and they want that to focus on, like, our eight detailed activities that we do across the year. And so we're the lead on community engagement there, which comes with its own indicators, but we also have to track the progress of all these eight other projects. So that's the transportation improvements, the walking path, solar panel installations, a very wide encompassing group of activities going on. So what clearpoint helps us do is for them to report that in real time to collect that information so the data and information is more accurate when we come to deliver it to the state. We also use workflows in clearpoint. So reminding our grant partners every month to update their information, we open this small reporting window that sends out like, three automated reminders at the start of the window, the middle of the window, and the end, where they are reminded to put in that information that they're missing. And then, yeah, like I said, at the end of the year, we have this beautiful report where I feel very confident about the data and information reporting back to the state.

Oh, great. What does the state think about.

Yeah, they love it. They think it's great. They definitely saw the value in using it. Not every grant has to use a platform such as this, but I think it's been pivotal with our Community engagement and the fact that we have to work with eight different organizations to collect this information.

And do those organizations complain or worry about it or is this just standard for the way that grants like this work where organizations reporting.

Yeah, there's, I will say this grant specifically is a little demanding and the amount of reporting, there's many other reports that we do, but I was primarily the lead on getting everyone acclimated to the use of clearpoint and how to navigate it. But especially like within recent years with the updates you guys have done and the organization of how it's all laid out online, it's, it's really user friendly and I've hardly had to make any time for individuals and, and there's also so many resources online that clearpoint provides. So even when, you know, I don't always have to bury the load of keeping people up to date on things. They. There's so many resources at clearpoint that kind of help them make sure that they know what they need to do and how to get to it.

Okay, awesome. Are you using clearpoint for anything else?

Yes. So we started using clearpoint several years ago and now we are using it, we are live this year in 2024 to use it in all of our departments internally as an organization. So we have three branches, we have three clinics, we have our direct programming and we have grant work which is grant writing and grant management. So we're using those in all of our departments, even our operations, hr, what have you. So it's been, it's been awesome this year we're live with that and all of our scorecards and all of our departments are utilizing clearpoint under our organization now.

So in the, in kind of the overall healthcare landscape as a nonprofit, you kind of sit in an interesting spot, it feels like, is that you know, county and state public health are looking to you for, for information, but also to provide education. The, the, the payers, many times the insurance companies and sometimes the government and in Medicaid, Medicare are looking for you to educate the populations to help them become healthier so that they require less urgent health care, let's say. And then the providers typically like hospitals or healthcare systems also work with you to, to provide services, whether it's preventive care and also sounds like you run a few clinics. Is that, is that that kind of where you sit in the, in the world?

Yeah, definitely. You can think of it as like us supplementing our community needs for the continuum of care. So yes, you have your acute centers that are addressing things like within the Moment. But we try to approach, you know, health improvement from all sides of what's really needed and what, what we find lacking in the community where their needs are. So we. That does come. A lot of that is health education and promotion and lifestyle management, which is like incremental changes over time where you don't necessarily find that level of attention and detail from you, from a physician per se. And then our clinics are. Yeah, the federally healthcare qualified system. So they again, are serving those who are low income or have. Are marginalized in some way. So really just trying to like, supplement where the gaps are in healthcare. So we do that a lot of different ways.

That's great. So. So tell me a little bit about your background and your role in performance management.

Yeah, so my background, I have a master's in health promotion education and evaluation from Claremont Graduate University. I've really come to love the work of. Honestly, I'm a people person. I love the small wins that you get in health education and even the big ones getting to help people change the way they perceive health and how they just empowering others to take care of themselves. But in my role here with Riverside Community Health Foundation, I'm primarily working with the evaluation team and clearpoint is a huge part of that. We, I use here, we call them work plans, but they're very similar to logic models. For those of you who are familiar with logic models, I just believe it's a great way to kind of connect activities to outcomes. It's a great way to look at, you know, your processes, make sure you're looking at fidelity, you're looking at how well you executed on your plans that you made. And then there's the other side of it where you're looking at your impact that you're making in these communities.

No. That's great. So logic models I've seen in a lot of, a lot of organizations and you know, in, in the balanced scorecard world, we talk about leading indicators and lagging indicators and that implies, you know, some connection in a logic model. But why don't you tell me a little bit more about how these, how you use this model at the, at the foundation?

Sure. So the biggest logic model that we use right now is within our Health Strategies department, and that's our direct programming. So that's where we're tracking over 37 different programs and, and again, tracking those process measures as well as the outcome measures and the activities that contribute to those measures as well.

Can you show some of this, can you show, like, how you set it up in clearpoint.

Yeah, absolutely. You can let me know when you can see my screen.

Not yet.

It is saying screen sharing has failed to start. Please try again later. Error code. So I'm not sure I'll be able to. That is a new one for me. I apologize.

That is no problem. Essentially I could log into your account. You correct. If we want to try that while you look on your side. You should have attempted this ahead of time.

I know. Murphy's Law. Right. And the Health Strategy Scorecard will be the best one to show that scope of work, AKA the logic model.

Let's I'm going to share my screen and then let you. So am I in the right spot?

Yes, if you want to go to Scorecard home. Perfect. And then. So what's been wonderful within this scorecard is we're able to look at this department. This department has four focus areas as well where we categorize our programming. Those categories are women's and maternal health, like you can see here. We also have a teen health focus area, a community health and a chronic disease prevention and management. So this is quite a lengthy scope of work. If you're just to look at it from the Health Strategies division, that's where you see over 37 different programs that we do. So this is very much the department level. But we can now go into like the focus area. So if you see to the menu on the left hand side, there's those different focus areas. So you can click on one of those and you'll see the specific focus area level reporting that we do here. So our focus areas meet regularly. They're able to use clearpoint and pull this up and make their updates in real time and apply a meeting agenda to the top of that. So clearpoint is being integrated into our regular meetings that we have. And within that they're going through and you can see it's January. They're obviously not every program is going year round constantly. So you'll see for right now these are where we're at with our activities for specific programs that were accomplished within the month of January. So from here again we're in the focus area level. And if you look down you can see Salud Integral de la Mujer. That is one of our program levels. So if you click into that, you're now going to be able to pull up what's a program level report. So you're seeing the description of the program, the responsible parties, our utilization of the GANTT chart. We have notes and attachments that we can utilize here. And then it Also links to our other activities and our measures that you can see from that logic model on the first page. I think it's one of the most beautiful things about clearpoint is being able to make updates in one area and see them apply in other reporting. So it's been really efficient for our program assistants who are the ones doing most of the updating within clearpoint and their teams to. Oh, no worries, to do so within that program level reporting.

Let me go right back to it. I'm in our demo server so I didn't want to mess anything up in your. In your.

Appreciate it. So another thing that we love about the program level reporting is we have board reporting that we do on a bi monthly basis and we'll highlight about 2 to 3 of those of our programs that were active within the period that we're reporting out on using the program level report. We can export that into a briefing and it also attaches all of the supplemental information we would like to like. Flyers, any results. Our reporting from the evaluation department as we upload, you know, our findings on impact and process evaluation, all of that gets compiled neatly into this, into this lovely program report. We're going to be able to pull about 2 to 3 to those and attach them with our other additional board reporting. So that's another thing that clearpoint really helps us to do.

No, that's great. This is like it's really in depth. I know I'm not the best driver of it because I'm on this side and you're on that side, but seeing just how you look at these focus areas, the key objectives, being able to look at the short, intermediate outcome measures with the process descriptions and measures kind of show where you can capture many of these leading and lags and pull it all into a nice report. Anything else that I should show while we're here before we kind of talk about, you know, where you are in the overall process?

No, I think that's it. I hope I was clear on how to navigate like how we break it down from the program to the focus area to the overall department. It's really beneficial when as the evaluation department we have so many different needs for reporting. So being able to aggregate this information in the many ways that we are able to makes our lives a lot easier and we're able to focus on other things. So very appreciative of clearpoint to do that.

No, no, of course. So you've been using it obviously for this grant program. You're using it at the health strategies areas and you're rolling into departments. Tell me a little bit about kind of where you are kind of overall, you know, in these different areas.

Yeah, for sure. So for the other, every department does have a scope of work. Obviously it's not as detailed as the health strategies one that's, you know, everything. We're not getting down to a program level. In those other departments. Some of them have divisions like marketing and development and they do have their list of activities and process and impact measures. So those are a lot more or a lot less, I'd say sophisticated. They're very simple metrics on, you know, the goals that they set. They set smart objectives. That's like the specific, measurable, attainable, reasonable and timely. That's, that's our purview around helping them set their goals. And then they are just listing the activities that fall under those objectives and again, like what they aim the outcomes to be of that. So increasing by 10% on social media reach or building relationships or community connections with various organizations. So we're right now for each department, those are being, those are going to get more tailored out. And I'm really excited to get to that point in our work with them because obviously I come from health education. I provide a lot of support within the health strategy scorecard. That's why it's so well fleshed out. But I'm not a finance guru, I'm not a marketing guru. So they're really going to need to make their scorecards the most of what they can and I'm there to kind of help them figure that out and the functionality of what clearpoint can provide for them. So that's what we're really going to be focused on this year. It's more than just the scope of work. We're then going to be able to build out data visualizations within clearpoint as well that show those various indicators. And you know, as the months and years go by, that's when you get to start seeing the timeliness and the trends of the, the work that they're doing and getting to compare data and indicators to previous timelines and present information. So it definitely is going to serve us. I feel like our organization is, is finally getting ready, especially from the pandemic. I mean, we took a huge hit and now as we continue to just expand upon what we're providing and being out in the community again, our workload is getting larger. And so having something like clearpoint as well to keep us organized and focused, making sure that there's no missing pieces to our, to our operations is another really, really great thing.

Right, so give me the, give me the inside scoop here because you are like let's say process expert and measurement and evaluation expert and you're going into departments that, let's say maybe you're not measurement and evaluation specialists, but they are content specialists for how they operate. Is there a, a special sauce to get them to cooperate? Is, was this a, a mandate from a leadership team that they have to do it? Was it something they were excited to do? You don't need to call out people by name. But how did you give me the, the, the, the how did you really get it to work story?

Yeah, so we've had scopes of work in different formatting, like just a Word document or an Excel sheet. And what was happening here, and this is prior to my employment was just they would build out the scope of work and then they wouldn't look at it again till the next year and they would update for 23. So leadership would have an understanding of like what was going to be happening in the year and have, and you know, for the most part understanding that things were being met or executed. But now with clearpoint, we're really, it's that monthly, you know, check in, that's our reporting frequency here. So updating the status on things, you know, really helping us not just retain lessons like for ourselves and our own edification, but sharing that with the team, you know, and sharing that with new staff. And that's, that's been my approach with it. There was a bit of a mandate here with leadership, but at the same time, like that's been, my role has been connecting with all of the department heads, showing them what it does, you know, alleviating them of any concerns about, you know, micromanagement or, you know, the duplication of reporting. I mean all of this is to synergize that all of that is to make it very objective and you know, things were tackled or they weren't and when they're not, you just want to look at that with an honest, objective lens as to why that is. It's, it's not about, I mean there is a wonderful accountability tool here, but at the same time it's especially working for a non profit. It's so important to be able to demonstrate the impact that you're making and what you actually were able to do with the dollars that you received from grants from all these different funding sources. And that in turn turns into more money for us. So people have really been able to easily see the why behind this and it's so nice. As the evaluation department, we don't. We would get random data requests like, oh, hey, can you pull these numbers for me? And it would just be like a rabbit, like I would go down a rabbit hole trying to make sure it's accurate, make sure it's timely. All the things with data collection where clearpoint kind of just does that on a regular consistent basis, where we now just go to clearpoint for that information and it's been awesome.

Yeah. It sounds like even though there's been a leadership push for, for, let's say, a reporting system, structured reporting system, you've also been able to allow the departments to say, show me where you add value. Like, like you tell me what are the right things to measure and you're just kind of helping guide them through that, which gets better buy in as well. What about for. So for that leadership team, are you like, do they get reports out of clearpoint? Do you have a board of directors that's getting involved like, like how, how is this being communicated outside of kind of your team and the departments?

Yeah. So excitingly enough, we actually are having a new CEO come on board in March. So right around the corner they'll be getting access, of course. And then we have two board members that have access right now so they can come and look at our departments and their scorecards in real time at any time. And most of the time it is our leadership who is either creating briefings off of our scopes of work or our department scorecards and sharing those about like a week prior to our regular meetings that we have like our board reporting. So they're able to review the information, see it prior to the meeting. So the meeting is even more productive and time sensitive.

That's good. So it sounds like not only do you have better reports, but you're having better meetings.

Yes.

As a result, what about future plans? Any, any ideas on bringing in, you know, like health clinics or communicating to residents? Like, how do you, how do you think about that?

Yes. So we are looking to build a dashboard that projects clearpoint onto our website just to show one, the impact of our programs, our clinics and our grants that we manage, but also our strategic planning that we do. We have a new strategic plan every five years prior to the year that it's instated. We do this very lengthy needs assessment which we're doing presently this year. All of this is information we want to have in some way public facing. So getting to project and creating a dashboard that we can embed onto our website using clearpoint is also something that we're in the process of building right now. Speaking to our clinics. They primarily, we partner with neighborhood health care to run those federally qualified health centers. So they primarily use, I believe it's Power BI for their metrics and their reporting. And that's something that is compatible with clearpoint. We can either embed that information into clearpoint or we can embed clearpoint and Power BI into our website. There's many different ways to approach this, which is appreciated. So with, you know, in the coming, I would probably say maybe by the start of next year we can really focus on getting that clinic information into not just clearpoint but also into public facing information as well, which is really, really important as we try to push for transparency here at our organization.

So many times we hear about like county health departments doing a health needs assessment, something like that. Is, this is like. So when you say we're doing a needs assessment, is it, is it similar to that? And do you then go back to your 37 programs and try to align them appropriately or how does that, how do they interact?

Yes. So a needs assessment, you can look at it as there's two major phases, there's a secondary research that we do or we're taking existing information and that's using, you know, sources outside of rchf, outside of our organization. We're going to Healthy Places Index, we're going to cdph, California Department of Public Health, looking at what exists. And then the second phase of our needs assessment is the primary data collection where we're, we're creating surveys and we're doing community engagement and outreach to get information from those we're trying to serve. And that's where we identify the strengths of the community. I want to make sure that's important. It's not just about what's lacking, it's about what we do really well and identifying those two and those, and looking at that information, seeing what needs do exist and what, what services across our region are already in place. That shapes, you know, our focus area, that shapes the types of programming that we go after that are primarily. Most of our direct programming is grant funded. So it's taking, it's doing all this research and it takes about a year to do it. And that's fast, that's a fast needs assessment. They have to be very timely though, because there's just so much that it influences. So it's really like the first part of the strategic planning is doing this assessment and it is very much like the, which are now mandated they're required now by healthcare facilities to do these needs assessment periodically. We're not mandated to do that. We just understand the value and how it informs. You know, as an organization that supplements healthcare and the continuum of care, it's really, really vital information for us and how we get to do our programming. So with that, that again is gonna, there's a lot of area for clearpoint to contribute in making sure that our information that we're collecting on is well organized and easy to synthesize and distribute.

Right? Yeah. Now it sounds like a, you know, critical component in the, the overall strategic planning process. So, so I know we're running out of time, so if you, if you were talking to someone who was just getting started with clearpoint, what, what advice would you give them?

Yeah, advice. I, I love that there are. So I've been telling this to staff, like there's so many ways you can navigate towards something within clearpoint. And like I speak with my department heads, it is what you make of it. So if you can really understand the purpose in which it serves. You know, we, we have so many other softwares here at our organization that are client focused. This is a much more summative level of the impact that you're having. This is not supposed to be the most gr. It's not a data storage site. Right. So it's, it is, but it's at a higher level. It's not, you don't, I don't have HIPAA information on here. There's no patient information. It's, it's very much a broader scale of that. Like I said, you can, and I love that you can adjust it and configure it to any approach. It just depends on like you obviously your work and what you need. But it's, we've been able to use it in so many different facets like starting with the grant and their very specific projects and their scopes of work. But then you have the community engagement one where we're, we're touching all of those projects within the community engagement because community engagement needs to be done with everything. It's just the more you play with it, the more insight. You just got to get in there too. Like don't, don't be too hesitant. And it's been really easy. I've made mess ups too, where something's just been missing all of a sudden and you're like, this was here yesterday. I have no idea. It's always been recoverable. It's always, you know, it's never truly deleted. You just need to go. And, and there's always been support on hand, too, at Clear Point. So I would just, I would say my advice is, like, don't be too nervous to get in there and navigate it and get through things. And once you're able to conceptualize between the elements and the reporting, like, you can build so much in here and there's so much potential.

Well, I greatly appreciate it. Thank you for taking the time to share your insights with us today, and good luck with the needs assessment.

Thanks so much. Thank you for having me.