Access HealthColumbus
Assuring access to healthcare for vulnerable people in Franklin County
About - Our History
Background and History
In the late 1990s, a variety of organizations in Columbus became interested in the problem of health care access for under- and uninsured residents of Franklin County. Taking the lead was the Columbus Medical Association Foundation, which instituted the Access to Health Care Initiative, a five-year project setting aside $1.5 million in funding to initiate community-wide system change in health care access and delivery of services.
In 2002, as the result of a partnership between the Columbus Medical Association Foundation and the Osteopathic Heritage Foundations, Access HealthColumbus became a separate nonprofit corporation.
During its infancy, Access HealthColumbus functioned as a network to convene a variety of separate initiatives across the Columbus community and to provide small grants to these sites as warranted. As a growing organization, Access HealthColumbus sought to formalize and expand its role in the medical community by becoming the central administrative hub in Columbus’s system of health care to its uninsured populations.
Program Description and Evaluation Methodology
The Project
In 2001, Access HealthColumbus contracted with Mark Murray and Associates of Sacramento, California, to analyze and make recommendations to improve the local system of primary care delivery for vulnerable populations. The results assessed the current delivery of care to the uninsured and offered direction to alleviate some of the system’s current problems. Based on the general recommendations of the report developed by Mark Murray and Associates, the board of Access HealthColumbus sought models for a new system which would improve health care delivery in Columbus.
In 2002, the Columbus Medical Association announced the acceptance of a nearly $1 million HCAP2 grant on behalf of Access HealthColumbus to undertake an access initiative by creating a pilot project in the Southside neighborhood of Columbus. The HCAP grant included two primary goals: the formation of a network of primary care providers to provide “medical homes” for patients and the implementation of a management information system to support the centralized management of scheduling and referrals.
The Access Network pilot project relied on two models in its original design: 1) Advanced Access and Office Efficiency, a model of same-day scheduling promoted by Dr. Mark Murray, and 2) Project Access, a community-based healthcare system financed and supported through the donated care of local providers in Buncombe County, North Carolina.
According to the initial plan, the project would include and be evaluated on the progress made on the following components:
- A Voluntary Care Network (VCN) of primary, specialty, and ancillary clinicians and facilities;
- A management information system to support each aspect of the VCN;
- Ancillary services (such as transportation) to support client access; and
- Incorporation of ongoing formative evaluation research into continual program development and improvement.
The Access Network project evolved a great deal over the pilot year. The same-day scheduling promoted by Mark Murray and Associates became less and less important to the project. In addition, the focus on recruiting specialty clinicians decreased as providing clients with medical homes became the priority. Lessons learned from the pilot year center on the applicability of models developed in other locations and other settings to the unique context of the Columbus, Ohio, medical community. The plan for the Access Network changed over the course of this learning curve and still saw successful accomplishments of many of its original goals.
