Health Care Assistance Program(HCAP) & Conroe Regional Medical Center(CRMC)
Health Care Assistance Program(HCAP) & Conroe Regional Medical Center(CRMC)
February 28, 2018
The Montgomery County Hospital District Healthcare Assistance Program (HCAP) is expanding eligibility services to Conroe Regional Medical Center in order to increase access and improve healthcare for indigent residents of Montgomery County. This pilot program will place an HCAP representative in CRMC by March 6 to streamline the process of finding eligible applicants for services.
HCAP Manager Adeolu Moronkeji will spearhead movement, and she said that going where potential HCAP patients are, could lead to more taxpayer savings as well as less stress on EMS and hospitals.
“It’s almost like we are expanding our HCAP doors to these people. Our application process is like our front doors. We’re helping them navigate to the appropriate types of services so they’re not using the hospitals. I think it’s going to be a financial benefit to the community as a whole and even to the clients. Hopefully they can achieve better health outcomes.
Over the years MCHD has discovered that many eligible residents who are hospitalized never initiate or complete the application process for HCAP. Program data shows that in fiscal year 2017, only 8 percent of potentially eligible hospitalized indigent patients completed the application process and enrolled in HCAP.
She said due to lack of transportation and other barriers that prevent them from seeing primary care physicians, a lot of potential HCAP clients use the hospitals to meet healthcare needs in cyclical patterns. This brings financial burdens on them and the community.
“I’m going to be housed at the hospital,” Moronkeji said. “That will give us a good opportunity to form relationships with case managers and the people that we need to know in the system to be effective.”
Providing onsite Eligibility Specialists to indigent patients at CRMC will enhance MCHD operations by addressing the core mission of the district. It will also provide first line support to residents who are in dire need of access to quality health care services.
“We’re going to test it out for 90 days to see if we can be effective,” Moronkeji said. “If we’re not we can go back and reassess and make a decision based off of is this really doing what we want it to do.”
MCHD and HCAP leadership have developed a document that outlines the purpose, impact and outcome objectives for this project. They have facilitated meetings with CRMC stakeholders to encourage a collaborative approach and to secure necessary support for project operations.