PINES HEALTH SERVICES
Grant: $180,500 - Health Resources and Services Administration - Mar. 23, 2009
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Award Description: ARRA - Increase Services to Health Centers: Our service area population?s need for primary care case management, availability of a sliding fee scale for services rendered and assistance obtaining prescription medications for clients without prescription coverage is addressed. One full-time RN Case Manager was hired. A second RN Case Manager position, however, was neither posted nor filled due to uncertainty about our economic climate. IDS funding will allow the second Case Manager to be hired, enabling our patients to access needed primary care and specialist services. This enhances continuity of care by decreasing missed appointments and referrals, and improves patient outcomes and health status. 1.5 FTE Financial Counselor/Prescription Assistance Eligibility Assistant positions will be created and hired as a result of IDS grant funding. Although both programs currently exist within the organization, they are staffed respectively by 1.0 FTE each and based at a single health center. Both current staff members travel to other health centers within our approved scope of project, but the absence of a personal representative for the majority of the days and hours that our major health centers are open is a deterrent to enrolling larger numbers of clients in our sliding fee scale/discounted fee for service and prescription assistance programs. The additional staff will proactively engage our patients when income is reported below 200% of the FPL or is unreported, provide them with printed and verbal information about these two programs to demonstrate the ease and benefits, and initiate follow-up to complete applications for benefits on behalf of our patients. A 1.0 FTE position is retained and two new 0.75 FTE positions created that will address, in a manner sensitive to the deeply conservative and independent character of the patients we serve, the needs of extremely poor and uninsured populations.
Project Description: Our IDS grant application was funded to retain 1.0 FTE Registered Nurse Case Manager, and hire 1.5 FTE new patient services support positions as Financial Counselors/Prescription Assistance Program Assistants. All 2.5 FTE positions were on board for the quarter. One of the Program Assistants (0.5 FTE position) was involved in an automobile accident on 7/25/09, requiring surgery and time out of the office for recovery. This resulted in a temporary decrease in new enrollments from the previous quarter. At the end of the quarter, the RN Case Manager saw a total of 17 new patients (although not necessarily new to our health center), and had 34 total encounters/visits with these patients. Cumulative totals for Case Management in the two quarters of ARRA-IDS grant funding are: 28 new patients and 51 total encounters/visits. Our health center is seeing an increasing number of uninsured patients. For the reporting quarter, 3 patients were identified as newly uninsured. Additionally, of the 166 uninsured patients seen at least once in the reporting quarter, 36 of those had visits coded as new patients. We have not reported these statistics relative to the ARRA/IDS grant as ?new patients?, since these patients weren?t seen as a result of newly hired or retained direct care providers. As a result of our ARRA/IDS grant supported staff, we added 14 new patients (and their families) to our Sliding Fee Scale/Discounted Fee for Service program in the reporting quarter, with an additional 15 patient applications in process. Fourteen (14) patients were newly enrolled in our Prescription Assistance Program during the quarter. Due to the economic recession and addition of the ARRA-IDS funded staff, the program is providing almost $100,000 in prescription drugs to patients each month.
Jobs Summary: RN Case Manager (1.0 FTE) and two Prescription Assistance / Financial Counselor program intake assistants (1.5 FTE) (Total jobs reported: 3)
Project Status: Less Than 50% Completed
This award's data was last updated on Mar. 23, 2009. Help expand these official descriptions using the wiki below.
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