Adirondack Medical Center

Under this grant, Adirondack Medical Center’s (AMC’s) goal was to continue to reduce the number of uninsured throughout its region.

In 2002, AMC formed the Uninsured Task Force (UTF) to address the challenges of providing access to care. UTF collected data to track coverage rates in the community, which—despite national trends at the time—increased since its inception. Although UTF was unable to track the number of individuals who were enrolled as a result of its work (i.e., facilitated enrollment agencies and other relevant organizations were unable to provide specific enrollments resulting from UTF events), it was able to look more broadly at local insurance enrollment by using the grant funding to conduct a survey of the region in December 2008; the results showed that despite the economic downturn, the region’s rate of uninsured showed little change from the last survey conducted in May 2005.

Adirondack Medical Center’s Uninsured Task Force (UTF) has collected data to track coverage rates in the community, which—despite national trends—have increased since task force inception. UTF seeks to further expand coverage throughout the region.

With support from NYHealth, UTF will strengthen progress on its initiatives by hiring a part-time coordinator who will:

1. Work with organizations and businesses to target enrollment of hard-to-reach populations and to make enrollment initiatives more efficient and cost-effective.
2. Expand current efforts to work with school nurses and educational institutions to enroll children.
3. Expand current efforts with businesses and Chambers of Commerce to educate them about public insurance options, Healthy NY, and other public/private, and private insurance options for employees.
4. Disseminate the successful UTF model to other rural areas in New York State.

The project’s overall goal is to increase the rate of insured adults from 89% to 91%, and to increase the rate of insured children from 97% to 98.5%.