Collaborating to Identify West Virginia Medicaid Patients Who Visit Emergency Rooms

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By The Intersector Project

Connecting state and local government leaders

| February 26, 2015

In West Virginia, a public-private partnership is working to deliver preventative care to these patients, allaying the need for future emergency visits.

Health care is, undoubtedly, an area in which intersector projects have the potential to make a significant impact. A few weeks ago, a public-private partnership to identify and provide help for at-risk Medicaid patients was announced in West Virginia.

The Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) and the non-profitPartners in Health Network are teaming together to identify Medicaid patients who visit emergency rooms. Their goals is to deliver preventative care to these patients, allaying the need for future emergency room visits. The hope is that the partnership will improve care for Medicaid patients and ultimately cut down on health care costs.

These cross-sector collaborations are one way of changing health outcomes, said DHHR Cabinet Secretary Karen Bowling. “As we begin to think about how do we change things, and move West Virginia in the right direction to change our health outcomes, we have got to have these types of programs in place so that there is sort of an acknowledgement of the need to do things differently,” she said.

This is not the first time the West Virginia DHHR has actively collaborated with businesses and non-profits. West Virginia’s West Child and Family Services Plan outlines collaborations between internal and external stakeholders to ensure child welfare data is shared on a regular basis. Through this initiative, members from both government and business work together to assess agency strengths and areas needing improvement. The goals and objectives for improvement are then determined through a “coordinated and collective process.”

This article was originally posted on the blog of The Intersector Project, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to advancing collaboration across sectors as a way to address society's complex issues, and is republished here with permission.

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