program-communitiesincharge.docVIP

Lessons Learned from Community-Based Models of Care for the Indigent/Uninsured; Financing Mechanisms and Strategies for Integrating Healthcare Services December 2001 This paper was prepared with support from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Communities in Charge program. Introduction The United States is facing significant challenges in providing access to healthcare coverage for the country’s uninsured. There are over 39 million individuals without health insurance in the United States and, between 1988 and 1998, the number of uninsured grew by an average of one million individuals each year. To help develop programs that address these issues, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, through its Communities in Charge (CIC) initiative, provided planning grant funding in 2000 to twenty communities to plan and develop programs to provide access to healthcare services for low-income, uninsured individuals. The objective of the Communities in Charge initiative is to assist communities in rethinking care delivery and financing for low income uninsured community residents. While the CIC communities are currently in the process of developing their programs, several other communities have already implemented successful programs to provide healthcare coverage to the uninsured. To share the experience and learning from these existing programs, the Communities in Charge National Program Office at Medimetrix (Medimetrix) conducted high level research on several operational, community-based models of healthcare coverage. The objectives of the research were to: Identify financing mechanisms that communities have developed to leverage county, state and federal funding Pinpoint strategies for integrating healthcare services, focusing specifically on effective delivery systems, methods of provider payment, and care management strategies. This research was conducted at the request of one of the CIC grantee communities. The results were