Health Authority CEO chairs Governor-Elect Wellness Workgroup

Chris Allen, Executive Director and CEO of the Health Authority, was named chair of the Wellness, Prevention, and Promotion Workgroup for Governor-Elect Rick Snyder. The workgroup addressed one of Snyder's top priorities, "Reform Michigan's Health Care System." "Every Michigan citizen should have access to affordable and quality health care," notes the report of the workgroup. "He wants to move Michigan to a more patient-centered model to achieve cost savings, promote wellness, and improve service quality."

The specific task of the workgroup was to "take health care to the people" and place wellness at the top of the health care agenda.  The workgroup looked at effective and creative ways to motivate healthy behavior, including successful approaches taken by other states.

"It is vital to eliminate State of Michigan interdepartmental competition and duplication, which would foster an environment of collaboration," the report notes. "IT (information technology) will be a crucial part of reforming how health care is administered in Michigan. It makes sense to enroll individuals now in education and prevention programs before health care reform fully is implemented in 2014. This will provide an opportunity to achieve a healthier lifestyle and strive to avoid hospital admissions or limit costs of any necessary admissions. It is important to support health reform and leverage specific existing activities on prevention, access, and wellness to national initiatives."

For a complete copy of the report, contact Dennis Archambault at 313-871-3751 or darchambault@dwcha.org

MichUHCAN, M.O.S.E.S. discuss 'Essential Services' with MHA

Since the closure of St. John Detroit Riverview, community health advocates have been sensitive to the prospect of other health facilities and health services closing as a result of the economy or health system business initiatives. This fall, MichUHCAN completed work on a community education document called "Ensuring Essential Community Health Services," which was endorsed by M.O.S.E.S. and Gamaliel of Michigan, which plan to conduct meetings with health systems to develop trusting relationships that hopefully will prevent closure of health facilities or elimination of essential health services.

Last month, Dennis Archambault, representing MichUHCAN (Chris Allen, CEO of the Health Authority, is a member of the MichUHCAN Board of Directors) and Val Przywara, a community organizer with M.O.S.E.S., met with members of the Michigan Health and Hospital Association to discuss the contents of the paper and specifically ask the association to adopt a voluntary set of "Principles of Community Engagement," which will foster improved relations between health systems and community health advocates. The principles include:

·         Engage community health advocates and opinion leaders, as well as public health authorities, in an organized, non-adversarial fashion, in advance of a closure to discuss the situation, including potential alternatives.

·         Establish a formal workgroup with community health leaders, including representatives of public health, community health centers, and community health advocates.

·         Establish a formal referral protocol to identify primary care and chronic care capabilities for patients going to emergency departments for such care.

·         In cases of closure, respect the communities' "right to participate" in an advisory capacity.

·         Be accountable to the community, not only for the care and safety of the organization's existing patient population, but for the potential community served.

·         Conduct a public meeting to discuss service closure.

·         Prepare a written transition plan that will assure that essential health services will be maintained in the community affected by the vacancy.

This initiative is an outgrowth of the Health Authority's "Near Eastside Initiative," which resulted in recommendations for filling the vacuum left by the closure of Detroit Riverview. For copies of either report, contact Dennis Archambault at 313-871-3751, or darchambault@dwcha.org

Covenant Community Care, Beaumont open community health center

Beaumont Hospitals and Covenant Community Care have teamed up to open a community health center on Woodward Avenue offering high quality, affordable primary health care for area residents with or without insurance.

The new Covenant Community Health Center at 27776 Woodward Ave. in Royal Oak is the second federally qualified health center in Oakland County. Medicaid recipients in Oakland County have grown by 64 percent from 70,911 in 2002 to 110,040 in Sept. 2010. According to an analysis of census data by the Brookings Institute, people living at the poverty level in Oakland County rose by nearly 14,000 or 13.7 percent from 2001 to 2009.

The 3,800-square-foot center will provide a place where everyone is welcome and where everyone in Oakland County can afford to be healthy under the care of a Beaumont doctor. The health center will serve about 8,000 uninsured and underinsured patients annually.

Beaumont is providing up to $1.4 million in financial support to help cover capital and operational costs for the center and will provide in-kind donations, such as lab testing for patients. Covenant Community Health Center patients requiring follow-up specialty care will be able to receive it through a new voluntary network of specialist physicians to be launched in early 2011.

By providing uninsured patients with access to primary and specialty medical care, the number of nonemergency visits to Beaumont's Emergency Center is expected to decline. Patients will be able to get the routine care they need in a more appropriate, lower-cost setting. With the implementation of health care reform legislation, the Covenant Community Health Center can become a "medical home" for residents who will qualify for insurance coverage under reform.

It also fits in with the federal government's push to expand the number of community health centers across the country under health care reform. The Affordable Care Act provides $11 billion over five years to double the number of people seen in community health centers.

The center's designation as a federally qualified health center by the Department of Health and Human Service's Bureau of Primary Health Care provides grants to help provide patient care and allows the center to purchase patient medications at a discount.

Covenant Community Care Inc. is a nonprofit, faith-based organization that, in addition to the new Royal Oak site, operates two other community health centers in southwest Detroit seeing more than 5,000 patients a year. Beaumont, a three-hospital regional health care provider, has supported the Covenant Community Health Centers in Detroit for more than four years with volunteers, specialist services, inpatient care and lab testing.

Q&A

'What the heck is an AHEC?'

At the risk of perpetuating the acronym in the English language, Wayne State University has added another to the region - Area Health Education Center (AHEC). These centers are comprehensive educational outreach programs designed in educate and motivate young people, primarily in middle school and high school to pursue careers related to health care, particularly community health. Wayne State, through its Schools of Social Work and Medicine, Colleges of Allied Health and Nursing, and the University of Detroit Mercy School of Den is managing this initiative statewide. The Health Authority is the local partner, organizing the educational outreach.

Q.        What does an AHEC do?

 A.        The overarching goal is to improve health care services in underserved areas of the United States. This is done through recruiting more people into health careers, offering support to professional students so they can get experience working in an underserved area, and connecting health care professionals in the remote/rural locations with continuing education opportunities to reduce professional isolation.

 Q.        Who is it for? Who does it serve?

A.        AHECs benefit all of Michigan. There is a particular interest in reaching disadvantaged populations. Disadvantaged is a broad term describing under-represented groups.

Q.        Why should I be interested?

A.        You may want to increase your skills to advance in your career, you may have a loved one who may be interested in a health care career, you may manage a health service and want a student for an internship or residency, or you may want to prepare someone to assume your responsibilities when you retire.

Final thoughts...

Media projects workforce demands of the new Medicaid enrollees

"There could be a million new patients in hospitals as a result of health reform. How will doctors and hospitals cope?" That was the intro to National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation" program on Nov. 16. The program assembled experts to project the demands on health services that this population will make and encouraged callers to comment on the potential crisis in health care. The premise of the discussion, while hardly new to the health care community, was worthwhile for general audiences, but was intriguing in its own way. The broadcasters assumed that the "million new patients" in 2012 will immediately flood hospitals. What about the challenge of enrolling them and the ability of states and the federal government to fund the system? Why do we assume they will be sick? And if we assume that they will be sick, they probably are sick now, either filling hospital emergency rooms or living in misery. And at risk, of course, is whether this benefit will actually be funded once the new federal legislature takes a new look at funding health reform through fiscally conservative eyes.

NPR did us all a service by devoting considerable time to discussing the looming health care workforce issue, which is critical to the long range planning of the Health Authority. But we shouldn't assume that that the new Medicaid population will necessarily be sick. That's the challenge and opportunity of community health centers - to prove that we can create healthy community by entitling people to primary care and providing access to specialists to manage their chronic care. The Health Authority is committed not only to helping build the new health care workforce, but also to create a healthier community among safety net populations.

In any event, it gives us pause to consider that if we're concerned about "a million new patients" flooding hospitals in the near future, we should be concerned that they're probably acutely ill now and probably flooding hospital emergency rooms. We need to address this issue now, regardless of when health reform takes effect. And we need to encourage young people to pursue community health work as their careers.