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.”
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