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Medicaid Savings Resulted When Community Health Workers Matched Those With Needs To Home And Community Care

An Evidence-Based Practice

Description

The Community Connector Program was created to test a mechanism of identifying vulnerable populations with unmet long-term care needs, using community health workers, and empowering people to gain access to home and community-based services. Provisions in the Affordable Care Act seek to expand community health workers use as a cost-effective component of the health care workforce.

Goal / Mission

The goal of this program is to reduce costs by using specially trained community health workers to help connect people with unmet long-term needs and/or those at risk of entering nursing homes to Medicaid home and community-based services.

Impact

Similar interventions may help other localities achieve cost-saving and equitable access to publicly funded long-term care options other than institutional care.

Results / Accomplishments

The intervention group had 23.8% lower average annual Medicaid spending (excluding prescription drugs) over 3 years vs. a comparison group because of a substitution of home- and community-based services for nursing home care, yielding a ROI of $2.92 per $1 invested after accounting for operating expenses.

About this Promising Practice

Organization(s)
Arkansas Community Connector Program
Topics
Economy / Government Assistance
Organization(s)
Arkansas Community Connector Program
Date of publication
Jun 2011
Location
Arkansas
For more details
https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff....
Target Audience
Older Adults

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An Evidence-Based Practice meets the following HCI criteria:

  1. The program description includes at a minimum: the sponsoring organization, program goals, program implementation steps, and outcomes that have demonstrated program success in achieving the program goal in one or more localities.
  2. The results from an evaluation of the program include quantitative measures showing improvement in the outcome(s) of interest after the implementation of the program (i.e. increase in smoking cessation, not just the delivery of a smoking cessation program). The outcome measure(s) is/are compared at relevant time periods before and after the intervention or program implementation. Alternatively, the evaluation study compares the outcome(s) between an intervention group and an appropriate control group.
  3. The study is of peer-review quality and presents numbers in a scientific manner; measurements of precision and reliability are included (e.g. confidence intervals, standard errors), results from statistical tests show a significant difference or change in the outcome measure(s), and relevant point estimates and p-values are presented. Note: if the results from an evaluation of a program are presented in a scientific manner and the outcome measure is improved compared to the baseline measurement or the control group but the difference is not statistically significant, the practice is classified as effective and not evidence-based.