After four years of collaborative work, the Partnership HealthPlan of California (PHC) and Lake County get a chance to see the impact they have made on the community.
The PHC has over 565,000 members in the 15 counties they serve. In Lake County, 46 percent of the population is a part of PHC.
Liz Gibboney, Chief Executive Officer of PHC said their goal is to help the members in the community to be healthy and get the attention they need. The company’s main focus has been to help low income residents who might not be able to afford better health care service.
“Our mission is to help our members and the communities we serve to be healthy,” Gibboney said. “And our vision is to be the most highly regarded health plan in California.”
Gibboney said the PHC has been a part of five health improvement initiatives that focus on improving the community health, behavioral health, safe management of opioids and health information exchange. With their Pain and Safety Initiative, they have seen a 73 percent decrease of unsafe doses of opioids, which is an addictive prescription pain reliever, since 2014 in Lake County.
The program has provided Lake County with $3.1 million in funding toward the Quality Improvement Program, which was put in place to improve the outcomes by investing in projects for the physicians, primary care providers and specialist in the area. PHC has also provided the county with $1.5 million in Intergovernmental Transfers by providing a vehicle for coverage purposes.
Gibboney added that there has been over a 70 percent of growth in their membership since they have started and it will continue as more people enroll in health services.
Dr. Marshall Kubota the Regional Medical Director for PHC said he is very familiar with the local health care system and how it has improved.
“Connections are important and the fact that we are diversified in our offices it means we meet people face to face,” Kubota said. “We’re very proud of the fact that in our clinicians they can get to a live voice in under one minute.”
Kubota said they are lucky that they are in a community that is interested in the medical and economic health of the people and proud to be invited to be a part of various initiatives that are in the county.
“We can give better care, better experience for the patients, at a reduced cost,” Kubota said.
Looking forward, the PHC will be releasing an initiative next month where they will provide $25 million to help with transitional housing when coming out of the hospital and returning home along with other housing supports.
One of the concerns the PHC has and is keeping an eye out for is the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and how that will impact the number of people enrolled in the program.
Karen Tait, Lake County Health Service Officer, said that with the partnership they have better collected data and the ability to look at information in real time, which they could not do before. This gives them the ability to treat people more holistically and find trends.
“I just think it can’t be said enough that we’re so fortunate to have Partnership here in Lake County,” Tait said. “We have a great deal of flexibility and Partnership is very open to thinking outside of the box in terms of how we approach a health issue and putting resources towards it.”
