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Lessons from the field: how an ad hoc stakeholder network is helping redefine medical respite care in Los Angeles
Lessons from the field: how an ad hoc stakeholder network is helping redefine medical respite care in Los Angeles
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Series Title(s):
- Issue brief (California HealthCare Foundation)
- Author(s):
- Menninger, Bonar, author
- Contributor(s):
- California HealthCare Foundation, issuing body.
- Publication:
- [Oakland, CA] : California Health Care Foundation, June 2023
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- Delivery of Health Care
Medicaid
Respite Care
Social Determinants of Health
Stakeholder Participation
State Health Plans
Los Angeles - Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal (CalAIM), the groundbreaking, multiyear effort aimed at transforming California’s Medicaid program, offers a variety of nontraditional services to help address some of the health-related social needs many of the state’s 15 million Medi-Cal enrollees contend with daily. Among these available services, which are collectively known as Community Supports, is medical respite. Also called recuperative care, medical respite provides shelter and basic clinical care to people experiencing homelessness who may be too ill or too weak to recover from a hospital stay or emergency room visit on the streets but who don’t require additional inpatient care. These patients frequently grapple with a high burden of illness, trauma, substance use, and mental illness. By supporting safe places to heal, CalAIM’s recuperative care option creates a means for interrupting the progression of cascading medical events often experienced by unhoused Californians. As such, the program offers a path for substantially reducing Medi-Cal costs tied to default emergency room care and hospital readmissions for those experiencing homelessness. In 2019, almost half of the patients experiencing homelessness in California visited the emergency department four or more times and were more likely than other adults with low incomes to be admitted to the hospital. Beyond improving care and reducing costs, medical respite also provides an opportunity for at-risk persons to engage with other social services more easily, including recovery programs and temporary and permanent housing. It consequently can serve as a powerful tool for helping disrupt the broader cycle of homelessness. But while CalAIM promises to make recuperative care more accessible, offering medical respite services through managed care represents a significant change for both health plans and the state’s recuperative care providers. Most of the latter are small, nonprofit, grant-funded agencies that have traditionally worked only with hospitals. With those limitations in mind, a group of Los Angeles- area stakeholders coalesced in early 2021 to share best practices ahead of CalAIM’s January 2022 rollout. They also sought to anticipate some of the barriers smaller provider organizations would likely face in the new environment. The volunteer initiative became known as the Los Angeles Recuperative Care Learning Network (LARC) and was initially designed primarily to help medical respite providers contract effectively with managed care plans. But LARC quickly evolved into a more broad-based network that now includes not only providers but also representatives of health plans, hospitals, area government agencies, foundations, and other interested parties.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY-NC-ND license. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (9 pages)).
- NLM Unique ID:
- 9918734178106676 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918734178106676