North Carolina did not expand the number of adults eligible for Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, but the state is pursuing other avenues of healthcare reform. The state Department of Health and Human Services and Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina have teamed up to work on a program to shift how healthcare is paid for.
The new plan moves from a traditional fee-for-service model to payments based on health outcomes. The change has support from health systems and medical providers across the state. Officials are also working on initiatives that partner healthcare providers with community organizations to address factors that lead to higher healthcare costs, including access to healthy food, housing and transportation issues.
Host Frank Stasio digs into these initiatives with Dr. Mark McClellan, the founding director of the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy at Duke University. He is also a physician and a professor of business, medicine and health policy.
Agencies in Greensboro have put one of these initiatives to the test in their Asthma Partnership Demonstration Project. Cone Health, the Greensboro Housing Coalition and researchers at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro collaborated on the project, which addressed asthma triggers for 41 families. Kathy Colville, the healthy communities director at Cone Health, shares the project and talks about how the hospital group hopes to implement it on a larger scale.