Partnering to create transportation options for families of children with special health care needs : San Joaquin County 5Cs Case study (Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health) Linton, Leslie S., author. Children with Disabilities Health Care Coalitions Health Services Needs and Demand Transportation of Patients Organizational Case Studies The 5Cs Collaborative baseline survey of its membership identified the need to access medical care outside the county (usually in the San Francisco Bay Area) as a major challenge for families of children with special health care needs. It typically takes two hours or more, one-way, to travel to facilities in the Bay Area. Many San Joaquin families and the agency representatives who serve them had reported that they could not secure transportation, frequently resulting in rescheduled and missed appointments. This led the 5Cs Collaborative, in addition to pursuing broad issues of care coordination at monthly or every other month meetings of the partners, to investigate what types of systems changes would ease transportation problems faced by families. The 5Cs Collaborative planned to prepare a guide identifying available resources for families, but learned in the process of contacting the 26 licensed vendors in the county that only one, and, at one point, no vendors were willing to actually provide these services. The vendors cited low reimbursement rates and a preference for local trips because payment for out-of-town trips did not compensate them for the lengthy and time consuming trip out of the county, including waiting time. The 5Cs Collaborative prepared a memo about this lack of resources and circulated it widely, including with local political figures, putting the issue on the agenda for a number of agencies. 5Cs Collaborative members continued to pursue change after their LPFCH grant had concluded in the summer of 2016. Inspired by the possibility of making better transportation options a reality for San Joaquin County families, the group applied for a new LPFCH grant and was issued a $12,000 grant for the period September 1, 2017, through August 30, 2018. The scope of the new grant was to support the 5Cs Collaborative’s work on systems change, including a plan to partner with San Joaquin Council of Governments, coordinate payer agencies to support clients to use a new system, and coordinate messaging information among service agencies and partnerships to maximize ridership.12 The two leaders of the transportation project were Kelly Mraz of First 5 San Joaquin, and Dr. Armando Valerio, Therapy Services Manager, California Children’s Services Medical Therapy Program. The story of San Joaquin 5Cs’ collaborative efforts to secure and support systems change, a new system of out-of-county non-emergency medical transportation services (NEMT), follows. Palo Alto, CA : Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health, September 2020 Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health, issuing body. Technical Report Text 1 online resource (1 PDF file (21 pages)). nlm:nlmuid-9918366886506676-pdf 9918366886506676 http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918366886506676 English California United States Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0