Last month, the Connecticut Mirror ran an article entitled Study: Babies wrongfully lose state insurance at first birthday about a report by CT Voices for Children, HUSKY Program Coverage for Infants: Maintaining Coverage When Babies Turn One.  The crux of the article and the report was that:

Thousands of infants inadvertently lose Medicaid coverage after their first birthday because of a confusing eligibility process that occurs when the state Department of Social Services changes the way the babies are categorized

This is a topic we’ve been very concerned about at CHC and we’ve been working on innovative ways of addressing this problem.  Today, we sent out an email about our efforts.

When Community Health Center, Inc realized that a large percentage of their patients under the age of 19 were not being re-enrolled into Medicaid, the organization applied for, and received, a grant from the Childrens Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA) to implement a highly successful, preventative program, focused on the retention of these patients. Through the use an innovative marketing and outreach campaign, paired with an automated redetermination system, renewal numbers within CHC are currently at 95%.

The marketing strategy utilizes a diverse mix of media best suited to reach our patient population, including radio, cable television, social media, online and print. An animated PSA was created, in both English and Spanish, to cut through the “clutter” and best fit the programming and audience of the specified television stations. It can be viewed below. In addition, Facebook advertising was utilized to target likely parents and encourage them to check http://www.qualify4care.com.

You can see the two videos here:

Medicaid Reenrollment PSA

Medicaid Reenrollment PSA in Spanish