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Uniform Data System, Jan. 8, 9 QTS, Leadership Session, Feb. 27, 7:30 am - 1:30 pm QTS, Quality Institute, Feb. 27, 1:30 - 4 pm |
In this Issue
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Welcome to Senior Policy Coordinators Kimberly Keymer and Caleb Gilchrist. Welcome to Aza Nedhari, Project Specialist – AWI; and AWI Project Assistants Melissa Salinas and Kevin McNeill. Welcome to Cathy Morales, Director of Community Health Access and the AmeriCorps Community HealthCorp participants. Welcome to Linda Gardiner, RHIO Project Intern. |
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Leadership Voices |
 DC Council is Taking Action to Address the District's Health Care Injustices Recently, I was privileged to receive the 2008 Distinguished Public Official Award from the DC Primary Care Association. I want to especially thank Chief Executive Officer Sharon Baskerville for this honor. The DCPCA has truly been an effective advocate in promoting the development of an effective health care system that guarantees access to primary health care for residents regardless of their address and their ability to pay. Engraved on the award I received was a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.” Unfortunately, the statement made by Dr. King more than four decades ago is still true today. While the injustice of unequal health care has been known and decried for years, we still face stark disparities driven by race, socio-economics, and geography. In short, people of color, the financially challenged, and persons who live in certain areas continue to experience an inordinately high incidence of chronic and debilitating health conditions. It would be easy to conclude that these outcomes are attributable to a lack of health insurance coverage. The reality is that the District is one of the best insured jurisdictions in the nation. In substantial part, our dreadful outcomes are attributable to more intractable problems associated with health care behavior and lack of access. One in every five residents still has no established relationship with a doctor. By simply providing someone with health insurance does not necessarily translate into more proactive preventive behavior by those who are accustomed to seeking health care only when they become very sick and in an emergency room. When the debate was raging about building a new hospital on the old DC General site, few made the argument that there were not enough beds in the District. It was more based on the misdistribution of beds such that Greater Southeast had become the only hospital east of North Capitol Street. But the issue is not just the distribution of hospital beds that leaves the eastern end of the District underrepresented. It is the absence of a real health care system with an adequate number of primary care professionals to encourage people to use primary care services. The Council has taken a number of actions aimed at beginning to address this “shocking and inhumane injustice in unequal health care” that Dr. King described. -The Council passed the Health Care Professional Recruitment Act to provide an educational loan repayment program to physicians, nurses, dentists, and others in return for working in underserved areas, with federal dollars to match. I was pleased to partner with Councilmember David A. Catania and DCPCA to ensure enactment. -The District has increased the economic cap for DC Medicaid and DC HealthCare Alliance coverage so that more people are eligible. -Services covered under Medicare Part D have been expanded. -An HIV/AIDS initiative was established in east of the river communities where the disease is spreading at the fastest rate. Importantly, Congress has removed the ban on the District using public funds to operate a needle exchange program proven effective here and across the nation in preventing the spread of HIV and AIDS. -The District made an unprecedented investment of $79 million in the United Medical Center, formerly Greater Southeast Community Hospital. -When I arrived at the Council in 2005, I introduced a bill to create a DC Department of Health Care Finance, recognizing that the huge health care financing budget needed to be managed separately from the DC Department of Health. The new department was officially launched on October 1st. -The District recently announced more than $50 million in health care grants to District organizations, including DCPCA. The grants are part of the proceeds obtained from the latest round of payments from the 1998 tobacco company settlement. -And the Council adopted universal health care coverage legislation in order to pick up the seven to nine percent of our residents still without coverage. In the wake of the victory of President-Elect Barack Obama, there is hope for a more viable national health care system. The District, like every other place in this nation, is facing major health care challenges. But we also can be rightly proud of the progress that has been achieved. And organizations like DCPCA have greatly contributed to this progress. |
