Health Care Access
NPCC in January published “Improving Health Care Access: Finding Solutions in a Time of Crisis” (1.0 MB PDF). This report offers recommendations for governors and other state officials on ways to improve the use and effectiveness of community based collaboratives that result in better access to health care.
The report is an outgrowth of an NPCC-sponsored colloquium for experts in health, health care policy and financing, community collaborations, and coalition and consensus building in the health arena.
“Obstacles to health care access represent a profound national problem that grows worse each year,” writes PCI/NPCC Co-Chair John Kitzhaber, M.D., in the foreword to the report. As a 14-year veteran of the state legislature and a two-term Governor of Oregon, Kitzhaber played a key role in building and financing state programs to improve access to health care. “Yet some of the best potential elements we conceived were sabotaged by unduly rigid regulatory environments, and by competition and conflicts of interest among stakeholder groups.”
The Health Care report addresses those issues; its aim is to inform both new and seasoned public leaders in designing and implementing successful community-based collaboratives that result in better basic health care.
Written by NPCC Fellow Tina Castañares, MD, the report includes four case examples of how communities have enhanced access to health care, and the vital roles that state and federal government have played in those successes. It also includes dozens of useful web resources on collaborative approaches to health care access.
A printed version of the report is available upon request.