Reaching Massachusetts Health Care Reform Goals: Effective Collaboration of a State Medicaid Program and Community Outreach Workers

In 2006, Massachusetts enacted comprehensive health care reform legislation. The goal of the new law was to ensure that all Massachusetts residents have access to health care coverage. To meet these goals, MassHealth (state Medicaid program) engaged community organizations across Massachusetts to provide education, outreach and enrollment assistance to local residents. Priority was given to organizations whose staff offered greatest knowledge of the community, linguistically and culturally sensitivity and technical skills needed to assist residents with enrollment. The University of Massachusetts Medical School was recruited to provide grant management and evaluation services. Of particular interest to MassHealth was documentation of the “best” or most efficacious outreach and enrollment practices provided by outreach workers.

Methods and findings and will be presented describing the “best” outreach and enrollment practices of grant funded organizations. Preliminary results indicate that during the 6 month grant period, 35 participating organizations assisted 32,000 individuals to apply for subsidized health insurance. Efficacious practices fell into three categories 1) the ability of outreach workers to develop trusting interpersonal relationships with applicants 2) experience of grant funded organizations to engage local residents and 3) level of state and local collaboration. Policy implications will be discussed stressing the importance of State and local partnerships when implementing health care policies that require residents to understand and comply with new health laws that have personal and economic implications. Clips from a documentary film created during the first year of health care reform will offer personal accounts of effective outreach by community outreach workers.