State awards $170,000 grant to health coalition to help enroll more individuals into health plans

By Owen Boss

WESTMINSTER — The state’s Office of Medicaid Tuesday awarded the Joint Coalition on Health a “network coordination” grant of $170,000, which will be used to identify, educate and enroll individuals who are eligible for MassHealth, Commonwealth Care and Commonwealth Choice health insurance coverage. The coalition is a consortium of four coalition member organizations that include the Montachusett Opportunity Council, Community Health Center Family Health Center, HealthAlliance Hospital, and Heywood Hospital. As illustrated at the meeting, the four members of the coalition have come together to strengthen and expand existing community-based outreach and enrollment services targeting uninsured children and adults in north central Massaschusetts. This consortium plans to formalize and expand its previous outreach and enrollment activities by forming a network of organizations called North Central Health Access Connections, and the MOC will serve as the lead agency and fiscal agent. This is the second consecutive year that the coalition was granted these funds, and according to Lori Martiska, vice president of community relations and development for Heywood Hospital, the grant was awarded largely in part because of the coalition’s success in 2007. “We did more as a group than we every could have done as individual programs competing over grants,” said Ms. Martiska. “We obviously showed that this model worked last time, and we have no reason to believe it won’t work again this time.” With the grant the coalition received in 2007, officials were able to conduct outreach to more than 24,000 individuals across the state, and successfully enroll more than 5,100 individuals into MassHealth, the Children’s Medical Security Plan, Commonwealth Care, the Uncompensated Care Pool/Health Safety Net, and the Gateway Health Access Program, said Ms. Martiska. Kathleen McDermott, executive director of the MOC, outlined several goals for the grant. “Our goal is to enroll 3,200 more people who are either uninsured or underinsured into health care programs, and one of the things that we think is really important is finding a way to collaborate with businesses that do not currently offer their employees some type of health insurance,” said Ms. McDermott. At the meeting, she also emphasized the importance of educating people on the health insurance options available to them through state programs. “Commonwealth Choice alone offers 37 different plans, which can be very confusing for people,” said Ms. McDermott. “We as a coalition are here to provide basic information to them, and also enrollment information.” The success of the coalition in the past is forcing members to think of new ways to get information out to a much larger pool of uninsured citizens. At the meeting, several ideas were mentioned for targeting recent college graduates, who are required to file for health insurance for the first time. “The way that people are getting information is different than the way they went about it five years ago, and we need to utilize that” said Ms. McDermott. One member offering new solutions was Tricia Pistone, associate director for the opportunity council, who suggested using Myspace and Facebook to reach the important demographic. The Patrick administration announced a total of seven network grants across the state totaling $1.1 million. The state budget for fiscal 2008 provided a total of $3.5 million for outreach and enrollment grants, and the $1.1 million supplements $2.4 million in funding that was previously distributed to 45 different organizations conducting grasssroots outreach and enrollment efforts. Also benefiting from the funds provided by the network grant is the Gardner House of Peace and Education, which has been selected as one of eight agencies to receive additional funding. For their involvement, HOPE will receive a $2,000 stipend in return for having one of their staff members trained and arranging three meetings of their participants in the next eight months. The program also requires HOPE to keep some record of the number of people that they refer to the Community Health Centers or the GHAP program. oboss@thegardnernews.com

Appeared on Page 1 on 4/16/2008 (Vol. 206 No. 91)