Since 2007, the Community Foundation’s Boulder County Health Improvement Collaborative (BCHIC) aims to improve access to specialty care for Medicaid and uninsured patients countywide.
First and foremost, the Community Foundation’s Boulder County Health Improvement Collaborative (BCHIC) aims to improve access to specialty care for Medicaid and uninsured patients countywide.
“Since 2007, we’ve convened and facilitated dialogue among health leaders – physicians, healthcare administrators, safety-net providers, hospitals, and public health and human services leaders,” says Morgan McMillan, Vice President of Community Leadership. “Over the next six months, with a $300K grant from the Colorado Health Foundation, we’re ramping up recruitment of participating practices, and working with Salesforce to build and pilot a referral database.”
Specifically, BCHIC (see list of participants below) seeks to improve health outcomes among our community’s most vulnerable adults by recruiting subspecialty providers willing to treat Medicaid and uninsured patients; allowing subspecialists to control the number of patients they are willing to see; and streamlining the referral system for providers and care coordinators by capturing relevant subspecialist requirements for a successful consult.
“We want the referral process to work better for both providers and patients,” says Morgan.
“Boulder County is home to 90,000 people who are publicly insured, or who remain uninsured – and an estimated 70 percent percent of those are unable to access medically necessary specialty care. Our hope is to improve the quality, safety, efficiency and accessibility of healthcare and public health services for all community members.
“Simply put, BCHIC supports a culture of community and collaboration among area healthcare providers.”
Currently, BCHIC is focused on the following subspecialty areas: orthopedics, dermatology, oncology, and gastroenterology. “We chose these areas to start because they’re in greatest demand, and they have the best potential for high impact on patients and our community,” explains Morgan. “All told, Boulder County has more than 2,500 people on referral waiting lists across 14 subspecialty areas. We believe we could meet much of the unmet need with broad and evenly-distributed provider participation, each with as few as five additional patients per month.”
Key to BCHIC’s success is broad participation – the more providers participate, the better. “I encourage community-minded friends of the foundation to mention the Health Collaborative to their doctors as a form of advocacy on behalf of our most vulnerable community members. The more providers who participate, and the more we share in the responsibility, the less falls on any one specialty care provider.”
Adds Morgan, “When you think about what’s happening nationally in terms of healthcare, and when you’re asking yourself how to act locally, this is a great way to positively impact people in your own community.”
So far, participating practices in the pilot project include:
Referring entities are:
In the past year, the Community Foundation has granted more than $162K to organizations and initiatives tackling access to health care, poverty, violence prevention, mental health and more. We hope you’ll join our efforts by making a donation.
BCHIC participants include:
Avista Hospital
BoulderCentre for Orthopedics
Boulder Community Health
Boulder County Area Agency on Aging Boulder County Housing and Human Services Boulder County Public Health
Boulder Medical Center
Boulder Valley Independent Physicians Association
Clinica Family Health
Community Foundation Boulder County Dental Aid
Exempla Good Samaritan Hospital
Frasier Meadows
HealthBridge
Integrated Physician Network
Kaiser Permanente
Longmont United Hospital
Mental Health Partners
Physician Health Partners
Rocky Mountain Gastroenterology
Salud Family Health Services
The Boulder County Commissioners’ Office The Children’s Hospital
TRU Community Care
University of Colorado Boulder Wardenburg Health Services
Women’s Health
