Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation
Annual Report Fiscal Year 2012–2013
10
Health of Vulnerable Populations
positive impact on the medical and dental
needs of people throughout our state.
Take our grant, which supported the
North Carolina Institute of Medicine, to
develop a strategy to help increase
preventive oral health services for our
state’s pediatric Medicaid population.
The North Carolina Oral Health Action
Plan for Children Enrolled in Medicaid
and NC Health Choice, completed and
released in July, has a sizable name but a
simple mission: improve oral care policies
in our state to increase use of preventive
dental health services by children in these
programs. One example of the plan’s out-of-
the-box, yet within-the-realm-of-possibility,
recommendations is the creation of a pilot
program that lets hygienists place sealants,
one of the most evidence-based preventive
measures in dentistry, in school-based
settings. This care would be performed
without direct supervision by a dentist and
without kids needing to have a prior exam,
expediting the delivery of care and reducing
its cost. We see this as the kind of strategic
application of resources that makes real
change happen, getting kids help without
draining our already meager dental
workforce resources.
We also created the space for grantees
to share what they were learning—
convening a group of six safety net dental
programs whose members met regularly
throughout the year to share their
progress and discoveries with one another.
So while helping bring about cohort
learning activities such as “consultation
with business practice experts” and
“training in Motivational Interviewing”
may not sound like the most direct route to
better care for North Carolinians in need,
the results of our efforts are showing
that this approach is indeed fruitful,
with $1.2M in new revenue and 4,218
additional children treated by these clinics.
Although our path isn’t always straight,
our commitment to providing medical
and dental services to the most vulnerable
among us—and closing the holes in the
safety net—is unwavering.
SUSTAINING AND EXPANDING THE FREE CLINIC MODEL
For a decade now, the Foundation has partnered with the North Carolina
Association of Free Clinics (NCAFC), which provides technical assistance
(training, accreditation and advocacy) to 85 free clinics delivering
primary and acute care to uninsured North Carolinians. It has been a
fruitful partnership, significantly expanding patients’ access to care and
improving their health outcomes. Today, it’s worth celebrating that those
outcomes are on par with the care you’d get from other providers—69% of
hypertensive clinic patients have their blood pressure under control, and
69% of surveyed patients had fewer visits to the emergency department.
This success has drawn accolades fromwell beyond our state lines.
“At national, state and regional meetings, if you hear about quality,
it’s about North Carolina. Others are picking up the model,
figuring ‘Why reinvent the wheel?’ North Carolina is the road map
for the sector.”
Julie Darnell
, Assistant Professor, Health Policy & Administration
University of Illinois at Chicago
(Her work on free clinics has been published in the
Archives of Internal Medicine
,
Medical Care
, and in a Report to Congress.)
DENTISTS
PER
CAPITA
IS
46
th
NC RANKS
IN
AMONG CHILDREN
IN THE US
THE
LEADING
CHRONIC
INFECTIOUS DISEASE
DECAY
TOOTH
7
8
