The one health trend Rebecca Onie wishes would go away

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Rebecca Onie, CEO and Co-founder of Health Leads

“[The Atlantic] What’s a health trend that you wish would go away? 

[Onie] The health care system continues to focus disproportionately on “care” at the expense of ‘health.’ Because Medicaid does not generally reimburse for social workers, case managers, or community health workers under the prevailing “fee for service” payment structure, each clinic must carve out precious discretionary funds from its operating budget for this purpose—resulting in limited capacity to address the real factors impacting patient health.

The challenge becomes self-perpetuating. Overburdened case management staff focus on crisis cases, lacking the time and capacity to attend to other patients and document their needs (and resolutions of their problems). Absent this data, it is impossible to build the business case for these activities.

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