Medical Assistants’ Perspectives from the Ground: Team-Based Patient Care

Medical Assistants (MAs) are one of the fastest-growing health care professions. They are key members of primary care teams who take medical histories, measure vital signs, prepare patients for exams, and more. Care teams that better utilize MAs often see improvements in patients’ health outcomes, better quality and efficiency of care, and reductions in provider strain and burnout.

New York is currently considering a policy to allow MAs to vaccinate patients under clinician supervision, like every other state in the country. Now presents an opportunity to hear from MAs directly about their day-to-day work supporting patient care, perspectives on unmet needs, and ideas about the expanded roles MAs can play on care teams.

Join us for a conversation with Medical Assistants across the State, including Phylisha Worthington from Universal Primary Care in Western New York and Estefany Rodriguez from Open Door Family Medical Center in the Hudson Valley.

Speakers:
Phylisha Worthington, Medical Assistant, Universal Primary Care in Western New York
Estefany Rodriguez, Medical Assistant, Open Door Family Medical Center

Known Unknowns: The New Federal Administration and New York’s Public Insurance Programs

Public insurance through Medicaid, the Essential Plan, Child Health Plus, and Affordable Care Act (ACA) plans provide coverage to millions of New Yorkers. More than 9.5 million New Yorkers are enrolled in public health insurance, including nearly 8 million in Medicaid; 1.5 million in the Essential Plan; and 250,000 in ACA plans. Medicaid, in particular, is a core vehicle for coverage, jointly funded by states and the federal government. Enrollment in the program rose to historically high levels during the COVID-19 pandemic; now that pandemic-era policies have expired, New York State has undertaken a massive effort to preserve those gains.

New York has also focused on continuous Medicaid and Child Health Plus coverage for children ages 0–6; coverage for New Yorkers ages 65 and older, regardless of immigration status; more generous income eligibility for the Essential Plan; and additional financial assistance for ACA plans in the New York State of Health Marketplace. Even as the new federal administration’s policy priorities may threaten New York’s robust public insurance infrastructure and coverage rates, State agencies and community-based partners are continuing to support and expand health insurance coverage.

Please join NYHealth for a webinar on the administrative, legal, and legislative actions that have been floated by the new federal administration and their potential impact on New York, as well as efforts underway to help New Yorkers enroll in coverage and to engage the consumer advocacy community.

Speakers:

  • Elisabeth Benjamin, Vice President, Health Initiatives, Community Service Society of New York;
  • Lara Kassel, Coalition Coordinator, Medicaid Matters New York;
  • Robin Rudowitz, Vice President and Director, Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured, KFF; and
  • Avital Havusha, Vice President of Programs, NYHealth (moderator)

Webinar Date and Time: 
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
12:00 p.m.–1:00 p.m.

Register here.

Creating Healthy Habits

Ready for a jumpstart into creating healthy habits? Join WorkWell NYC to explore the fundamentals of habits, including understanding what they are and why they matter, as well as the science behind habit formation. Participants will learn key insights, reflect on individual goals, and gain practical strategies to support healthy habit development.

Your participation in this program is voluntary. All individual data collected is confidential and will solely be used to inform and improve wellness programming offered to City of New York Employees. For questions and concerns, please contact workwell@olr.nyc.gov.

Addressing Disparities through School-Based Health Centers

Join the New York Health Foundation (NYHealth) for a discussion about school-based health centers (SBHCs) as a resource for addressing health disparities in underserved communities. Strategically located in public schools serving these communities, SBHCs provide immediate access to comprehensive medical, dental, behavioral, and preventive health services—regardless of students’ financial or insurance status.

The first step toward addressing disparities is understanding them. Over the past year, the New York School-Based Health Foundation has leveraged its data repository to analyze racial, ethnic, and insurance disparities among student populations at both statewide and local levels. This work has laid the foundation for SBHCs to develop actionable strategies to close these gaps.

This discussion will feature insights on how SBHCs can address disparities and the policy changes shaping the future of school-based health services.

Speakers:

Lisa Perry, Director, New York School-Based Health Foundation

Adria Cruz, Deputy Director, Health Programs & Integration of Children’s Aid

Sarah Murphy, Executive Director, New York School-Based Health Alliance

PCDC’s 2024 Primary Care Summit

The Role of Data in Creating a Primary Care-Centric Health System

Earlier this year, the Primary Care Development Corporation (PCDC) released the New York State Primary Care Scorecard to bring together available data on primary care across four domains: workforce, access, performance, and health outcomes. This scorecard shows both the strength of and the gaps in health care data to inform policy decisions. In New York, the Statewide Health Information Network for New York (SHIN-NY), and the All-Payer Database (APD) are central to the state’s health data and information infrastructure. Today, the lack of publicly available expenditure data undermines the ability of policymakers and other stakeholders to understand the proportion of healthcare spending going to primary care. Making these data available will support policy and program analysis and help identify gaps in care.

PCDC’s Primary Care Summit aims to make recommendations and identify best practices in using publicly accessible healthcare data to determine programmatic and policy priorities that would help increase access to primary care for all New Yorkers, measure the impact and progress of those changes, and identify areas of need.

The Summit will explore the following issues:

  • Recommendations to democratize data in New York so there is transparency and accountability. What are the barriers to making primary care data in the APD and the SHIN-NY publicly available in New York?
  • Priorities for utilizing health care data to drive policy change in New York: what are the best statutory/regulatory practices for collecting, managing, and publicly sharing these data?
  • What can New York learn from other states and their health data systems?

Please join us as we host our annual Primary Care Summit. This year the program will include two panels with state and national experts. The first panel, focused on New York, will feature:

  • David Horrocks, CEO, New York eHealth Collaborative
  • Oxiris Barbot, M.D., President & CEO of United Hospital Fund
  • Anne Schettine, RN, Director of the Office of Health Services Quality and Analytics, New York State Department of Health

The second panel, discussing the national context, will include:

  • Kevin McAvey, Managing Director, Manatt Health
  • Erin Bonney, Director of Health Informatics and Reporting, Center for Health Information and Analysis (CHIA)
  • Susan Beane, M.D., Vice President and Executive Medical Director, Healthfirst

The Summit will end with a closing conversation between Louise Cohen, CEO of PCDC, and Sherry Glied, PhD, Dean of the Wagner School of Public Service at NYU.

The Summit will conclude with a networking reception from 5:15 – 6:00 pm.

Can’t join us in person? The program will be livestreamed.

Expanding Reproductive Health Care Access in Primary Care Settings

Primary care settings can play a vital role in providing access to reproductive health care, especially in underserved communities. This is especially true when it comes to accessing medication abortion (MA).

Abortion care remains legal and protected in New York State, but access to reproductive health care—including MA—is a challenge for a significant portion of the State. A variety of educational, structural, and organizational barriers deter the widespread provision of MA in primary care, and the number of primary care settings offering it in New York is unknown.

Please join NYHealth for a discussion with Silpa Srinivasulu, Director of Programs and Evaluation at the Reproductive Health Access Project, on expanding access to comprehensive reproductive health care services in primary care settings. Learn about the Reproductive Health Access Project’s work, barriers to access in New York State, and opportunities to make improvements.

Webinar Date:

Friday, November 22, 2024 
1:00–2:00 p.m. 

Register here.

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