Special Projects
Confidential & Covered
NFPRHA believes in universal access to confidential family planning services. With an increasing number of patients gaining commercial health insurance, providers are grappling with how to ensure that confidentiality is maintained, particularly given the risk of health information disclosure through explanation of benefit forms (EOBs). NFPRHA’s Confidential & Covered project seeks to respond to the challenge of confidentiality in the context of a changing health care delivery environment. Confidential & Covered is expected to provide a tool for Title X grantees and subrecipients to determine the magnitude of revenue losses occurring in service sites due to the provision of confidential services and an array of recommended operational practices that maintain client confidentiality while preventing or mitigating revenue loss.
Confidential & Covered is one of three projects that make up the HHS Office of Population Affairs’ ACA Collaborative. The three primary grantees are Guttmacher Institute, NFPRHA, and Altarum Institute. Together, these organizations will study the impact of health system changes as a result of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on Title X centers. The ACA Collaborative will study if and why service sites continue to see a disproportionate number of uninsured clients and assess the long-term factors affecting the sustainability of Title X centers. These include costs, billing, reimbursements, and network inclusion, as well as confidentiality.
Funding for this project was provided by the Office of Population Affairs (Grant Number 1 FPRPA006059-01-00). The views expressed by this project do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the Department of Health and Human Services; nor does mention of trade names, commercial practices, or organizations imply official endorsement by the U.S. Government.
The Get Covered project is also providing additional support to select NFPRHA members in five of the cities/regions identified as priority areas for outreach and enrollment by the Obama Administration. Member sites in Chicago, Dallas, Northern New Jersey, Philadelphia and Saint Louis have received grant support and in some cases support from temporary NFPRHA field staff to reinforce their current outreach and enrollment activities.
Get Covered Family Planning activities will continue throughout 2014. While the initial open enrollment period for insurance plans offered through the commercial insurance marketplaces ends on March 31, 2014, and the second open enrollment period opens in late 2014, Medicaid enrollment is open year round. Most states have a substantial number of residents who are eligible for Medicaid but are not currently enrolled in the program.
Outreach and enrollment efforts are important because they help the uninsured gain access to sexual and reproductive health services; help publicly funded providers free up funds that can be used to subsidize services or improve their infrastructure; and help providers establish a patient/provider relationship that will aid the long-term health of the safety net while improving health outcomes.
For more information about the Get Covered: Family Planning project, contact Nancy Clack at nclack@nfprha.org or (202) xxx-xxxx.