Housing insecurity among Medicaid users, Juneteenth holiday, Vaccine marketing
Hi, I’ll be live-tweeting today’s Cook County Health and Hospitals System (CCHHS) Board of Directors meeting for #ChiDocumenters @ChiDocumenters
08:59 AM Apr 30, 2021 CDT
The meeting starts at 9a.m. CST and the agenda can be found here: https://cookcountyhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/04-30-21-Board-Notice-and-Agenda.pdf
Board members ask Interim Chief Human Resources Officer Carrie Pramuk-Volk whether Juneteenth, which was declared an official holiday by CCHHS in Jan. 2021, would effect hospital operations. She said that it IS on the system’s calendar for Friday 6/18/21
Pramuk-Volk didn’t specify how hospital operations would be effected.
Juneteenth is a holiday celebrating the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States. It has varying official recognition around the US.
The Chicago Tribune reported on CCHHS’s recognition of Juneteenth as a paid holiday starting in 2021: https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-juneteenth-cook-county-paid-holiday-20201217-qbrw7gmokragrltyie45cm3yli-story.html
Aaron Galeener, Interim CEO of CountyCare, says that more data is needed to understand how to increase enrollment in certain populations: newborns, those w/ medicaid at Cook County Dept of Corrections (“justice involved population”), senior immigrants, etc.
Dr. Yvonne Collins presents on health equity initiatives: CountyCare found that about 25% of medicaid plan users experience homelessness
A CCHHS board member is shocked at the high number of homeless medicaid users. “That’s STUNNING. That’s 100,000 people”
Collins says that homeless member have significant behavioral health issues, which impacts the hospitals (“they are high cost members”) and Cook County jail
CountyCare wants to do more work to connect homeless individuals w/ mental health services, rather than filtering them into jails. “The data shows that the problem is bigger than we thought,” Collins says.
Board member Mary Driscoll asks about urgent care for the homeless. Collins says that CCHHS sends out text messages reminding users to see their primary care docs, as CCHHS wouldn’t get records if they visited, say, a Walgreens clinic
Galeener makes a correction: the 25% represents homelessness AND those who have been housing-insecure. “That 25% is not a pure homeless number,” he says.
The finance committee reviews contracts/procurement items. Some big-ticket items: $2.5M for vaccine call center staffing, $2.3M for parking services, $2.3M to contract w/ company who will collect data on patient satisfaction