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Community case management more successful in insuring Latino patients

Case Management Weekly, December 14, 2005

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Community-based case managers are much more effective than traditional government outreach and enrollment programs in obtaining insurance coverage for uninsured Latino children, according to a study authored by a physician at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

In the study, Latino families with uninsured children were assigned bilingual Latina women as case managers. None of the women had prior experience working as case managers, but all received specific training for the study. These new case managers helped the families with program eligibility and applications, and served as a liaison with Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Traditional outreach generally only consists of direct mailings and a toll-free telephone number and offers little or no assistance with the enrollment process. This study revealed that uninsured children assigned to community-based case managers versus traditional outreach were

• more likely to obtain health insurance (96% vs. 57%)
• more likely to be continuously insured (78% vs. 30%)
• obtained insurance faster (87.5 days vs. 134.8 days)

Source: Newswise and Medical College of Wisconsin

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