CHC Week 2006

RECENT EVENTS
National Health Center Week
Aug. 6-12, 2006

Quality, Cost-effective Care

Community health centers have been singled out for their high performance care to low-income patients by national universities and research institutions, federal and state agencies and patient advocates. There are dozens of national studies on the quality and cost-effectiveness of care provided by community health centers and their demonstrated and historic savings to state Medicaid programs and other insurers. In Massachusetts, we are working to enhance the collection and promotion of data that highlights our health center network’s role in improving community health, providing accessible healthcare to thousands of state residents, and helping to lower overall healthcare costs for the Commonwealth.

Nationally

Health center Medicaid patients are 22 percent less likely to be hospitalized for potentially avoidable conditions than Medicaid patients who receive care elsewhere.

The cost of treating health center Medicaid recipients is 30-34 percent less than the cost for beneficiaries receiving care elsewhere.

The cost of providing prescription drugs to Medicaid recipients is 26-40 percent lower through health centers.

Health centers have lowered overall emergency room use, and reduced inpatient admission rates between 22 and 67 percent.

In Massachusetts

Model health center programs have a significant impact on reducing health costs and improving the health of patients. For example, asthmatic patients enrolled in a disease management program at one urban health center had an 84 percent decrease in asthma-related emergency room visits and a 64 percent decrease in non-asthma-related visits over a recent five-year period.

Under the federal 340B drug-purchasing program, community health centers can provide reduced cost medications to their patients. These discounts are substantially more than the ones offered to the state’s Medicaid program.

Based on a recent study by the health center-based HMO, Neighborhood Health Plan (NHP), patients served by community health centers had fewer hospital admissions, hospital days and emergency room visits than did NHP patients who received their health care from hospital-based primary care sites.

Sixty-three percent of all health center patients participating in a statewide model diabetes program actively set goals to better control their diabetes through diet, exercise and improved monitoring of blood sugar levels.

Based on the Health Plan Employer Data and Information Set (HEDIS^®)^* for health center performance with Neighborhood Health Plan (NHP):

Community health centers treat children with upper respiratory infections appropriately more often than other provider models serving the Medicaid population.

Community health centers are less likely to inappropriately use imaging studies for low back pain than other network models.

When compared with hospital-based, staff and group practice models, community health centers have the highest rate of timely prenatal care.

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* Administered by the National Committee for Quality Assurance, HEDIS is a set of standardized performance measures designed to ensure that purchasers and consumers have the information they need to reliably compare the performance of managed health care plan.