Gov. Blunt Proposes "Health Care Homes"

Governor Matt Blunt unveiled the first piece of his Medicaid reform package in Springfield today, urging the creation of health care home centers around the state.

You can watch my Friday KY3 News @ 10 report on the Governor's initiative by clicking HERE.

This is the first recommendation by the state Medicaid Commission that the Governor has endorsed. The basic idea behind Blunt's plan is to create one central point or contact for Medicaid recipients to turn to for all their medical needs. Blunt said the health care homes are not so much buildings as they are a consistent doctor or nurse a Medicaid participant can work with, to track medical history, recommend preventive measures, set up a wellness plan and head-off future illnesses and diseases down the road.

"Establishing a health care home is the best way to provide a primary health care delivery model that focuses on wellness and prevention," Blunt said at the Jordan Valley Health Clinic Friday. "The health care home works to prevent the situation where one doctor is unaware of the medical treatment that's being delivered by another doctor, that may be delivering contradictory or duplicative services."

"So it's not as much about building as it is about somebody that sits down with a person, does a health risk assessment and helps to develop a plan of action to prevent those catastrophic events so detrimental to the well being of the participant and so expensive for taxpayers," Blunt added.

Blunt said the main problem is that unlike people with regular insurance, most Medicaid recipients do not have a primary care physician and instead go to specialists and the emergency room too often.

"The benefits of a health care home are countless, this is a very significant change," Blunt said.

Blunt calls for $60 million dollars over six years to help create and coordinate new centers with similar federal programs, called Federally Qualified Healthcare Centers. He wants to include all that funding in this year's budget and said Springfield would get $10 million of the pie.
Blunt is also proposing $750,000 in next year's fiscal budget to allow for a collaboration of mental health centers with FQHCs.

Blunt said he will also recommend an additional $5 million next year for a healthcare information technology initiative that will allow these centers to build electronic health systems to "close the digital divide that exists between providers."

Blunt acknowledged that this plan would involve asking physicians to do more than they do today, and compensating them accordingly for that. How to incentivize people to enter into these plans and participate in the wellness program is still being debated within the Blunt Administration.

"There are a number of other proposals related to that question and we'll have a good discussion about that in the future, but really not today," Blunt said. "We need to provide some innovative incentives to encourage people to do that. That's another recommendation and another discussion."

Blunt acknowledged that this plan would push some costs higher, mainly physician reimbursements and pharmaceutical consumption. But he called them "prudent investments" that would keep recipients "out of emergency rooms and often unnecessary hospitalizations."

Tim Swinfard of the Missouri Coalition of Community Health Centers stood next to the Governor to applaud the plan. "It doesn't just focus on what brought (the patient) in today or what's the illness. It focuses on this partnership to take this person to a better place over their life span."

We'll have more on the Governor's Health Care Home plan and reaction to it in future posts.