Hub & Spoke

Confusion Kumbaya

In a country increasingly divided between right and left, Fox and MS-NBC, climate-change deniers and Prius-drivers, it's encouraging when an issue comes along that we can all agree on.

Health care reform is a prime example. And what we can agree on about health care reform is this: it is really, really confusing.

Especially for people who don't spend their professional (or personal) lives combing through federal policy reports or fashioning wall-sized flow-charts to model the gazillion ways an individual can be insured or uninsured under the current healthcare system. 

(Incidentally, if you have a chart like that, please let us know.)

But national unity in confusion isn't actually all that great. Especially when it's our clients and patients we're talking about.

So the good folks at the California Primary Care Association in Sacramento put together an FAQ on healthcare reform that's targeted at front-line health center staff and providers so they'll be equipped to answer patient questions. 

The guide's still in "we need feedback on this" draft format, and so here's where you come in, faithful reader:

Click here to see the FAQ, and if you have a chance, leave a comment or drop us a line to let us know what you think. Are we hitting all the right issues? Are they the questions that patients in your health centers or your County clinics are asking? Are the explanations complete? Do we use language that normal people can understand?

We'd be stoked to get your thoughts and edits on this document. The goal, ultimately, is to help unify the public, not in resigned confusion, but in head-over-heels-excited, can't-wait-to-sign-myself-and-my-family-up-for-low-cost-insurance comprehension.

It's Go Time!

Faithful readers! We're back!

As you may have noted, this blog took something of a summer break.  

But, it turns out, the world of community healthcare didn't. It's been a whirlwind few weeks, and coupled with the state budget storms on the horizon, there's a lot to report and discuss.

We'll ease you back in with good news from National Health Center Week - which community clinics across the country just finished celebrating.

Last Thursday at Havana restaurant in downtown Walnut Creek we took the opportunity (with the generous help of the good folks at Kaiser Permanente) to fete the most spectacular community clinic staffers in our region, applauding the outstanding work they do on behalf of patients 24-7-365.  

Clinic managers, before a standing-room only audience, raved about their staffers, each with his or her own story of reaching above and beyond the call of duty while contending with issues ranging anywhere from chronic health conditions to domestic violence.  

Those rockstar clinic employees - medical providers and support staff alike - constitute the heart and soul of our member clinics, and it was fun to celebrate their contributions.

The icing on the cake was special guest Congressman John Garamendi, who joined us for lunch and spoke eloquently (and apparently extemporaneously) about how much health care and health care reform mean to him, not only as matters of public policy but personally as well, noting challenges that members of his own family have had navigating the current broken system of medical care in the US.

He was quick to point out that while there is still much work to be done with respect to Health Care Reform (what the heck, for example, are those Exchanges going to look like?), the Affordable Care Act is really just the beginning of real change. (His disappointment that that the Public Option wasn't part of the final package met with nodding heads and the occasional 'Amen.')

Of course, we couldn't let the opportunity go by without posing a few points of our own. Making the case that the success of healthcare reform hinges on the ease with which the feds allow us to grow to meet new demand, we urged the Congressman to streamline the process by which we can open new sites and expand existing ones. 

And, we noted, we can't grow in a vacuum. Our primary care services, to really work, have to be complemented by adequate specialty services, which of course have to be affordable for low-income patients.  So, you know, we weren't bashful.

National Health Center Week comes at the end of summer, but it always gives us the opportunity to look forward. This year we look towards the implementation healthcare reform, towards the 2010-11 state budget battle in earnest, and towards new political officeholders.  

We can't wait!