Medica 2019 Annual Report

It’s Who We Are Supporting communities is part of Medica’s culture. In 2019, our employees took advantage of their volunteer time off (VTO) benefit and they also gave $400,000 to charitable causes during our annual employee giving campaign. 1,650 EMPLOYEES 7,000 HOURS OF SERVICE 200 NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS

Medica employee Natasha Farhat

Building Capacity for Needed Care

1:1 Support Makes a Difference

We’ve shown our commitment to HealthFinders Collaborative (HFC) with multiple grants over the past decade. HFC is a community-based nonprofit that plays a vital role in its local health care system by providing health care services and wellness programming for immigrants and other underinsured populations in Rice County, Minnesota. In 2019, HFC combined a $40,000 grant from the Medica Foundation with other funding to build its capacity to meet a significant need for low-cost, culturally sensitive mental health services among its clients. HFC was able to introduce a mental health screening tool into its standard of care, cultivate a network of referral sources and hire a bilingual/ bicultural Latina mental health therapist. By the end of the grant period, HFC had screened more than 100 patients for mental health conditions and was actively providing therapy to more than a dozen people each month at two HFC locations and two area high schools. A recent study found that HFC’s services helped one person per day avoid using the emergency room and one person per week avoid an inpatient stay at each of Rice County’s two hospitals.

Preventing hospital readmissions is a critical strategy to improve the quality of care, reduce health care costs and boost member satisfaction. Hospitals ensure that prescriptions, self-care instructions and plans for follow-up care are in place for all patients when they are discharged. But sometimes these instructions are not enough to prevent a readmission. Co-existing health conditions and a host of other factors put some patients at greater risk of a setback that could land them back in the hospital. That’s why we rolled out a new program in 2018 that uses data analytics to identify hospitalized Medica members who have significant risk factors for readmission. We contact these members within three days of hospital discharge to offer personalized support. Members who opt in receive telephonic outreach from a Medica case management nurse for up to 60 days post-discharge. Together, the member and nurse work on specific issues the member has that are proven readmission triggers. It’s a high-tech-meets-high-touch approach, and it works. In a 15-month study that spanned 2019 and 2020, members who participated in this program had a significantly lower readmission rate than those who did not participate.

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