New York Health Foundation

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Year: 2006

National Urban Fellows, Inc.

To maximize each fellow’s talents while also providing a rich learning experience, NYHealth assigns concrete projects and goals to allow fellows to focus their time and energy. Connecting the fellow’s interests and existing skill set with opportunities to grow, expand, and attain new competencies makes for a fulfilling experience for the fellow as well as for the mentoring organization.

The National Urban Fellows (NUF) Program trains a diverse cadre of potential leaders in public administration and health management. Each fellow—chosen from a national competition—receives full tuition and a living stipend to complete a Master of Public Administration degree at the City University of New York Baruch College, and to spend nine months as an intern in a nonprofit organization in the United States. Since 2006, a fellow has interned at NYHealth and this support will continue for 2006 – 2007.

Social Ventures, Inc. Ithaca Health Alliance

Some 10,000 residents of Tompkins County, N.Y., lack health insurance; many of the uninsured live below the poverty line.

The Ithaca Free Clinic, the first to provide free medical care to uninsured residents, opened with limited hours in January 2006. With additional funding, Ithaca Free Clinic hoped to recruit additional volunteer health professionals, enabling significant expansion of the clinic’s operating hours and services offered, including a new pediatric clinic and public health education program.

Ten thousand Tompkins County residents do not have health insurance; many of these individuals live near the poverty line. This grant to Social Ventures Ithaca Health Alliance was designed to increase the availability of specialty services to uninsured residents.

The grant was used for a variety of expansion activities that included: (1) expanding the free clinic’s hours; (2) increasing the number of volunteers by hiring an outreach coordinator who will organize a volunteer recruitment campaign; (3) increasing the specialty care offered at the clinic, beginning with a monthly pediatric clinic for disadvantaged children; and (4) expanding the presence of facilitated enrollers who could train the clinic’s own volunteers to pre-screen patients and determine their eligibility for state health insurance.

The Ithaca Health Alliance was founded in 1997 as a member-supported, nonprofit community health organization to facilitate access to health care, especially for the uninsured.

St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center

Syracuse residents with mental illnesses encounter a number of barriers when attempting to access quality mental health care.

Too many individuals rely on a single source of acute mental health care— the Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program (CPEP) at St Joseph’s Hospital Health Center—despite whether or not they require intensive emergency services. Prior to 2007, CPEP had performed very limited outreach and used existing clinical staff to do so. CPEP’s leadership believed they could increase access to mental health services in the community through use of a mobile crisis team staffed by trained clinicians.

This grant to St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center’s Mobile Crisis Outreach Project helped expand psychiatric services provided in a patient’s home instead of an emergency room.

Three large community hospitals joined to operate a Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program, a collaborative organization located at St. Joseph’s Health Center providing emergency mental health services for Syracuse residents. Because many patients using services of the Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program do not require emergency care, this grant supported a mobile outreach program providing crisis outreach services and interim crisis services in people’s homes, rather than an emergency facility. Specific services included: (1) initial in-home crisis evaluations of patients who are not immediately a danger to themselves or others; (2) early stage crisis intervention; (3) expedited transfer to the Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program; (4) assistance with identification of and connection to appropriate community providers; (5) monitoring of medication compliance; and (6) provision of supportive services, including family support and education.

Center for Governmental Research

Health care costs are rising to what is arguably an unmanageable level, and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ project that health care spending will account for 20 percent of GDP by 2015.

Total health care spending in NY is about $45 billion, the highest in the nation. It is also clear that this spending is not buying high quality health care; the current system is geared towards acute, rather than preventive or chronic care, which could save costs. The efforts to stall and to reduce costs include consumer-directed health care, but it is unclear that consumer-directed health plans will actually control costs. With support from NYHealth, the Center for Governmental Research (the Center) will investigate the issue of cost and transparency in the New York State health care system and develop a report on its findings.

The Center for Governmental Research will collaborate with NYHealth on the execution and completion of this report. It is proposed that the Director of the Center will co-author this report with NYHealth staff. The Director will also be responsible for subcontracting with one or two other experts with whom NYHealth may consult in completing this report.  The Center will also convene a meeting(s) that would include health care leaders from across the State, to think through the potential strategies NYHealth could consider in this area. The final report on health care costs and transparency will include input from the Center, NYHealth and information derived from smaller papers submitted by the Center’s health care experts.

Center for Health Care Strategies

The Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS) conducted a strategic assessment of potential ways the New York Health Foundation could positively impact how health care and community services are delivered to elders. This report summarized the views of experts across New York State on opportunities for making these services more efficient and effective.

The strategic assessment covered at least four major interventions related to this topic: preparing communities throughout New York State to care for the increasing number of elderly people; better integrating acute and long-term care services; improving financing for long-term care insurance; and redesigning nursing homes for the 21st century. CHWS conducted small, targeted meetings with experts from the field and interviews with key stakeholders to help guide the thinking behind this report. It also drafted reaction papers were integrated into the final report. The final background report was used to guide the Foundation Board’s assessment of this topic as a potential focus area for future grantmaking initiatives.

National Urban Fellows, Inc.

To maximize each fellow’s talents while also providing a rich learning experience, NYHealth assigns concrete projects and goals to allow fellows to focus their time and energy. Connecting the fellow’s interests and existing skill set with opportunities to grow, expand, and attain new competencies makes for a fulfilling experience for the fellow as well as for the mentoring organization.

The National Urban Fellows (NUF) Program trains a diverse cadre of potential leaders in public administration and health management. Each fellow—chosen from a national competition—receives full tuition and a living stipend to complete a Master of Public Administration degree at the City University of New York Baruch College, and to spend nine months as an intern in a nonprofit organization in the United States. Every year since 2006, a fellow has interned at NYHealth and this support will continue for 2007 – 2008.

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