Latest news with #HealthyOpportunities
Yahoo
19 hours ago
- Health
- Yahoo
State lawmakers should reconsider plans to end highly successful health program
Patients have their blood pressure checked and other vitals taken at a mobile dental and medical clinic. (Photo by) One of the most encouraging public health initiatives to come along in several years is a state Department of Health and Human Services pilot program launched in 2022 called 'Healthy Opportunities.' The program is based on the simple premise that providing for food, transportation, housing, and other non-medical health-related needs of people enrolled in Medicaid would improve their physical health. And you know what? It did. Program participants were healthier and ended up in hospital emergency rooms less. Indeed, when researchers compared health care costs in the 12 months before and the 12 months after enrollment in Healthy Opportunities, they found cost savings of 85 dollars per person per month. Talk about improving health care system efficiency. Unfortunately, neither of the recent budget bills passed by the state House and Senate would keep the program up and running and that's a big mistake. The bottom line: Healthy Opportunities is the kind of commonsense program the state needs more of, not less. Lawmakers should find the money to keep and expand it. For NC Newsline, I'm Rob Schofield.
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Successful health program pilot should awaken elected leaders to a simple and powerful truth
(Photo:) For elected leaders interested in improving the efficiency of government, a recent pilot health program managed by the state Department of Health and Human Services provides a powerful lesson. The program — known as Healthy Opportunities — was implemented in three mostly rural regions to see if the physical health of people enrolled in Medicaid, could be improved by providing them with food, transportation, housing, and other non-medical health-related assistance. The preliminary answer: a big 'yes.' Analysts found the project led to measurable declines in emergency room visits and hospital admissions for adults. And, when compared to the year prior to its origination, the project produced health care savings of $85 per person per month. The bottom line: this welcome news shouldn't be surprising. When families have access to basics like food, shelter and transportation, all kinds of societal ills are addressed and the demand for all kinds of public services declines. State leaders should learn from and build on this powerful lesson. For NC Newsline, I'm Rob Schofield.
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
NC health program praised as administrators seek legislators' help to expand
Map of NC counties participating in the Healthy Opportunities Pilot. (Source: NC DHHS) North Carolina launched a program called Healthy Opportunities in 2022 in three mostly-rural regions of the state to see if providing food, transportation, housing, and other non-medical health-related needs for people who use Medicaid as their insurance would improve their physical health. The federal government, which approved the Healthy Opportunities Pilot during President Donald Trump's first administration, has given the state the green light to expand statewide. 'Too often non-medical factors like lack of access to healthy foods or inability to get to an in-person appointment seem to stand in the way of disease prevention and better primary care,' said Dr. Mark McClellan, director of the Duke-Margolis Institute for Health Policy. 'This pilot has aimed to develop the infrastructure needed to enable these kinds of non-medical factors to be addressed, when they can help lower overall costs and improve health.' The state Department of Health and Human Services is hoping the legislature will support Healthy Opportunities' expansion. With budget season underway, Duke-Margolis hosted a video roundtable on the Health Opportunities Pilot where participants extolled the program not only for improving health, but for helping people recover from Helene, supporting small and medium-sized farms, and helping to reduce health care provider burnout. 'The question is, because of all the success we have had, how can North Carolina not afford to scale statewide?' said former DHHS secretary Kody Kinsley. 'We've got to continue to push forward because we need to control costs of health care broadly and upstream prevention is the clear answer,' he said. 'It's the win-win in driving down costs and improving health.' The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the federal office that oversees Medicaid, published an interim evaluation of Healthy Opportunities in November 2024. It said 11,809 people received the program's services between March 2022 and November 2023. Dr. Seth Berkowitz, an associate professor at the UNC School of Medicine, is leading the formal CMS evaluation. 'We found that the program reduces health-related social needs, so we see less food insecurity, less housing instability, things like that, when people participate in the program,' he said. The analysis reported a decline in emergency room visits that may be attributable to Healthy Opportunities. It estimated a statistically significant reduction in hospital admissions for adults. However, the estimated reductions in hospital admissions for pregnant individuals, and children and teenagers were not statistically significant. Hospital admissions for children three years old and younger were estimated to have increased. Considering health care costs in the 12 months before and the 12 months after enrollment in Healthy Opportunities, health care savings attributable to the program were $85 per person per month, according to the evaluation. The savings are coming from better health, not denying services, Berkowitz said. 'People still have access to all the same health care they've had before,' he said. 'A change in spending is really a strong indicator that people's health is improving and that is why we're seeing the need for health care spending go down.'
