Health coverage retention is a top priority of the Alameda Health Consortium (AHC) and our member clinics. To support our retention work, we have engaged in partnerships with ACSSA, HCSA, Kaiser, and CMS through a federal CHIPRA grant.
Over the last 3 years, the AHC and our 8 member clinics received grant funding to support enrollment and retention efforts for adults and children enrolled in Medi-Cal and Healthy Families. Currently, our clinics serve 67,000 managed care Medi-Cal and Healthy Families recipients. Kaiser Community Benefits Program awarded funds to support the Consortium and our member clinics’ efforts for outreach, enrollment, and retention strategies. The Consortium is also a grantee of the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA). Federal funding received from this grant also supports efficient and effective strategies to identify, enroll, and retain health coverage for uninsured children eligible for Medi-Cal and Healthy Families. Our focus area for CHIPRA is retention and re-enrollment for children who lost coverage, but who still remain eligible. Successful strategies include:
- Outreach at community events and school-based health center
- Renewal flyers and reminder notices in multiple languages
- Automated and manual reminder phone calls, and
- One-on-one application assistance. Funding was also used to provide resource training for 88 Certified Application Assistants (CAA’s) for enrollment and renewal application support.
We have made remarkable progress in our combined retention efforts. Lessons learned thus far:
- Outreach flyers and notices in multiple languages has a significant impact,
- Renewal reminder notices have increased the response for application assistance, and
- Automated reminder phone calls have increased a response for application assistance. By the end of both grant periods, inclusive analysis will help to identify which strategies seem to be the most cost effective. From this evaluation we can establish and share “best practices”. The graph below details our past and current retention rate.
This funding supports the infrastructure and process improvements needed to establish sustainable enrollment and retention strategies. Implementing these outreach strategies have increased awareness amongst patients and in the communities. This will be advantageous in preparation for the mass insurance enrollment and renewal outreach as 2014 approaches.