(HealthNewsDigest.com) – BETHESDA, Md. (March 9) — This year, nearly 750,000 Maryland residents will go without health insurance. But as a case study from the Healthcare Performance Management Institute explains, not many of them will be in Howard County. The county’s “Healthy Howard” program provides quality health care to the uninsured at a fraction of the cost of comparable private programs.
“Healthy Howard represents a tremendous victory in the battle to expand access to health care,” said HPM Institute Executive Director George Pantos. “But it wouldn’t have been possible without the development of the cloud-based data-analytics technology that drives the entire effort.”
Healthy Howard offers the uninsured basic medical care for as little as $50 a month. Participants in the program are matched with primary care physicians and health coaches who help them create Health Action Plans and take steps toward achieving health goals. Plan members also receive diagnostic tests, specialty and urgent care, and deeply discounted prescription drugs, among other services.
“The uninsured are less likely to receive preventive and therapeutic care. They are also more regularly diagnosed at more advanced disease stages and face significantly more medical debt compared to those with insurance,” said Howard County Health Officer Dr. Peter Beilenson. “Healthy Howard helps reverse these trends.”
Healthy Howard’s administrators can monitor patients’ health thanks to sophisticated, HIPAA-compliant analysis of healthcare data conducted by HCI’s software. The data can show whether patients are availing themselves of the services of care managers or adhering to their prescribed treatment regimens.
The combination of Healthy Howard’s clinical program, health coaching model, and integrated software enables the program to service its members for 75 percent of the cost of traditional insurance.
Since its implementation in 2008, Healthy Howard has garnered significant praise from the likes of Harvard University and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
“Healthy Howard provides an excellent model for other municipalities struggling to expand access to care for the uninsured,” said Pantos.”The program could even inform the efforts of state officials to set up the new federally mandated health insurance exchanges.”
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To download a copy of the HPM Institute’s case study on Healthy Howard, please visit http://www.hpminstitute.org/documents/CaseStudy_Howard_County_HPM_within_a_Medical_Home.pdf.
About the HPM Institute
The Healthcare Performance Management Institute is a research and education organization dedicated to promoting the use of business technology and management principles that deliver better and more cost-effective healthcare benefits for employers who cover their employees.
The Institute’s mission is to introduce and develop a new corporate discipline called Healthcare Performance Management (HPM), a technology enabled business strategy that tackles the challenge of controlling healthcare costs and quality in much the same way that enterprises have optimized customer relations, supply chain management and enterprise resource management. Supported by its four key pillars — Measure, Manage, Engage and Automate — HPM provides organizations with visibility and control over their healthcare benefits spending trends and risk-management postures while protecting individual employee privacy.
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