Disparities

Care Coordinators Cut Costs, Improve Health Outcomes, But Are Underused

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A few years ago, patient navigators at Project Access-New Haven set out to see if they could change the course of health care treatment for some Medicaid patients who frequently used emergency rooms.

They contacted emergency departments at Yale New Haven Hospital and its Saint Raphael campus and enrolled 100 patients in their study in 2013. Those selected had visited emergency rooms four to 18 times in the past year for chest pain, abdominal pain or chronic migraines, among other ailments. The navigators at Project Access coordinated health care for the patients. They scheduled appointments with primary care physicians, provided reminders, accompanied patients to physician visits and followed up to ensure compliance with the prescribed treatment. The preliminary results were eye-opening: “We saw an average cost reduction of $153 per member per month,” said Dr. Roberta Capp, assistant professor, Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Colorado Denver, and lead investigator of the study.

Disparities

Hispanic Outreach Fuels CT Health Care Push

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Cheila Serrano knows educating Hispanics who are uninsured and underinsured about the new options available at Access Health CT – the health insurance marketplace that opens for business today – presents a unique set of problems.

But with one in every four Hispanics lacking coverage, Serrano, a program director at Junta for Progressive Action in New Haven, is up for the challenge. Connecticut’s Hispanics represent the fastest-growing, youngest and poorest segment of the state’s population. Estimates of Connecticut’s uninsured vary. Approximately 344,000 people lack health insurance in Connecticut and 65 percent of the state’s uninsured are minorities, according to data being used by Access Health. Estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau in September, however, put the uninsured at 284,000.