Healthy San Francisco Expands Care June 1, 2011 News, SF Dept of Public Health Healthy San Francisco 0 The city's 4-year-old safety net initiative survived a legal challenge to become an urban test bed for improving care coordination under health reform. Healthy San Francisco, managed by the San Francisco Department of Public Health, is a program designed to make health care services accessible and affordable to uninsured San Francisco residents. It’s not insurance, but a reinvention of the San Francisco health care safety net, that enables and encourages residents to access primary and preventive care. It provides a Medical Home and primary physician to each program participant, allowing a greater focus on preventive care, as well as specialty care, urgent and emergency care, laboratory, inpatient hospitalization, radiology, and pharmaceuticals. More than 80,000 residents have signed up for the program since July 2007. The concept is having some success. Better coordination has reduced hospital admissions and duplicate care. Healthy San Francisco has encouraged the working poor and people who recently lost private health insurance to seek health care. The city reports that about two-thirds of the city's uninsured are in the program. Healthy San Francisco offers a glimpse at how the national health system reform law’s Medicaid expansion might stress larger cities’ health care safety nets. The program has allowed early access to care for many people who will qualify for Medicaid under the health reform law's eligibility expansion starting in 2014. About 60% of program enrollees are expected to qualify for Medicaid or subsidized private insurance in 2014. For more information about Healthy San Francisco and how this can be a model for patient care provision, visit Healthy San Francisco’s website or click here for AMA’s extensive report on this innovative care coordination. Source: http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2011/05/30/gvsa0530.htm Comments are closed.
