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HOME > ABOUT > PRESS > COALITION TAKES OVER HEALTHY KIDS
Article published - November 24, 2009
Credit: SONOMA WEST TIMES
Coalition to take over Healthy Kids program
Network of 15 health centers and clinics to streamline program
by David Abbott
The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors has voted to transfer management of the Healthy Kids Sonoma County program from the Department of Public Health Services (DHS) to the Redwood Community Health Coalition (RCHC).
The move is expected to streamline the process of enrolling uninsured children into public health programs by taking advantage of RCHC medical records software and its team of “certified application assistors.”
“It made sense for multiple reasons,” said Mary Maddux-Gonzalez, director of the Sonoma County public health division. “RCHC provides the majority of care to low income children in Sonoma County, and possesses an electronic Web-based application that allows them to administer the program more efficiently.”
The county expects to save upwards of $150,00 annually once the transition is complete.
The Sonoma County Healthy Kids collaborative was formed in 2004 to help provide health insurance coverage to uninsured children of low-income families in the county.
After four years of operation, enrollment of children in public health insurance programs has grown by 8,967.
Despite the increased enrollment, a survey by the California Healthcare Foundation indicates that there are still as many as 10,000 uninsured children in the county. Approximately 60 percent of those children qualify for one of the state funded programs.
Although the number of children enrolling in the program continues to grow, several sources of funding will run out at the end of 2010 when the California Endowment and the Blue Shield Foundation will no longer fund health insurance premiums for low-income children, representing an annual loss of $250,000.
According to the DHS “2010 Realignment Plan” presented to the Board of Supervisors at the Nov. 10 meeting, the majority of Healthy Kids funding comes from the First 5 program, which has contributed $1.7 million through 2009, and has committed to continued assistance for another five years.
The DHS has acted as the interim administrative organization since June 2005, and in November of that year, the Board approved a five-year business plan for the Sonoma County Children’s Health Initiative, the overarching program for Healthy Kids.
The Sonoma Healthy Kids Steering Committee has developed a plan to continue operations beyond its initial five year period, and the county will remain involved through the committee, under the supervision of Maddux-Gonzalez.
“This is something the steering committee has been working on for several years,” Maddux-Gonzalez said. “It made sense for the county. RCHC made the most sense.”
The RCHC is a network of 15 community health centers and clinics in Sonoma, Marin, Napa, and Yolo counties that serves between 100,000 to 300,000 patients annually, according to Pedro Toledo, Healthy Kids Enrollment Coordinator for RCHC.
Twenty percent of Sonoma County kids come to its clinics each year, and the system now has 28 trained enrollment workers on staff.
“It’s what we’ve been doing,” Toledo said. “We’ve invested millions of dollars in training enrollment workers so they can effectively get people into the program.”
Additionally, RCHC has reached agreement with One-E-App, an electronic medical records system that screens and enrolls patients in a range of health, social service and other programs. The system also allows patients to receive preliminary eligibility determinations.
“Health center staff doing the training and coordination should make it easier to deliver, since we’ve eliminated a layer of bureaucracy,” Toledo said. “We’re trying to streamline as much as possible.”
Toledo added that the goal of the RCHC is to create a medical home, and to help families find health insurance to gain access to services they don’t have.
Health officials remain hopeful that national health care reform will allow everyone to have access to timely, affordable care in the near future. Until such time, they will continue to reach out to the uninsured with whatever means are available.
“We need national health care reform, but even when we get it, we’ll need people to help people enroll,” Toledo said. “People wait until they are sick too enroll, and we want to stop that.”
Maddux-Gonzalez echoed that sentiment.
“We need a long-term solution to be sure all children get health care,” she said. “We need a state or federal program to be sure that happens.”
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