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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 19, 2016)
Street Roots • August 19-25, 2016 Page 13 News HEALTH, from page 7 man who is well known to a certain community in Eastern Oregon. Campbell did not give specifics — everyone in a small town knows everyone else, after all. The man has asthma and went to the emergency room two weeks ago because he had lost his inhaler. If that person had a home, Campbell says, he probably would be able to keep track of his inhaler and any other medications he is on and avoid the emergency room altogether. “An inhaler costs $50 or $60,” he says. “An ER visit costs a thousand dollars. You could have paid rent for a month or six weeks for that same amount of money.” Campbell said that in 2013, the Eastern Oregon Coordinated Care Organization spent 42 percent of its budget on only 2.4 percent of its 48,000 members. That small number of patients has numerous issues, including medical and behavioral health diagnoses, as well as poor access to transportation and housing issues. “That’s what got us serious about being more aggressive at addressing the social determinants of health,” Campbell said. If the waiver is approved, Post estimates 25 percent of Oregon Health Plan patients will benefit from the reimbursable supportive housing services through CCOs. “It’s the most vulnerable of the vulnerable,” she says. It is not. yet clear how much funding could be available for supportive housing services. Post said that the services Medicaid patients will receive will be more comprehensive, and that it could free up some money that social service agencies such as Central City Concern currently use on other services. The waiver will not allow CCOs to receive reimbursement for providing rental assistance funds or the construction of new affordable housing. Even if the supportive services low-income Medicaid patients receive is substantial, there will still be a bottleneck faced throughout Oregon as a result of the lack of affordable housing. “Even if the health care system said ‘yeah, we’re going to get behind this,’ there are no units to rent,” Post said. “It means that we can provide these services to people who are already housed in the units that are available.” Mm,‘rabies O. J). A fc x fc Ê t 3 0 ^ - $ F LAUGHINGPLANET.COM/SHOP lO W O ILfO
