L.A. Care CEO to Present at National Conference of America’s Health Insurance Plans

America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) is holding its four-day National Conference on Medicare, Medicaid & Dual Eligibles this week, and L.A. Care’s CEO John Baackes is among the panelists in The Value of Medicaid Managed Care session. The session will review recent research by Medicaid health plans to engage members in their care, improve access to care, and support providers and cost-effective management of public funds.

Baackes will provide an overview of L.A. Care Health Plan, the largest publicly operated plan in the country, serving low-income and under-resourced individuals in Los Angeles County. He will explain that as a public plan without stockholders to appease, L.A. Care is able invest in a wide variety of initiatives to improve community health. He will focus on one program, in particular.

Baackes will highlight the In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) and Home Care Training Program. The program is part of the L.A. Care’s Elevating the Safety Net Initiative. The primary goal of the initiative is to recruit primary care physicians into the Los Angeles County safety net to care for L.A. Care members. In-home supportive service workers are already caring for our dual eligible members, and the tools they receive in this training program allow them to become a more integrated member of the care team – able to communicate with confidence to the member’s primary care physician.

The 10-week course, run throughout the year by the California Long-Term Care Education Center (CLTCEC), teaches caregivers CPR, first aid, medication administration, nutrition and personal care. Baackes will show how the course has reduced the number of ER visits and in-patient hospital stays for members whose caregivers received this training. ER visits declined by 42 percent 20 months after the training. Hospitalizations declined by 60 percent 20 months after the training.

The program has trained nearly 3,000 caregivers since it started in 2017. Another 3,000 will be trained over the next three years. Baackes believes the success of the program illustrates the need for more training programs nationwide.