Community Health Center Receives AlohaCare Funds

AlohaCare News Release

Local, nonprofit health plan AlohaCare recently awarded Molokai Community Health Center (MCHC) $72,000 to enhance and increase patient screening and care through the MCHC’s Early Intervention Program. MCHC was one of 14 community health centers and clinics statewide that received AlohaCare funding, totaling $1.62 million in incentive awards.
 
The funding is part of AlohaCare’s Quality Improvement Incentive Program (QIIP), an annual initiative created to support projects that measurably improve clinical care, services and access to care, especially to Hawaii’s at-risk populations.  QIIP is based on a “pay-for-performance” model of quality improvement, where recipients must reach predetermined markers of performance to receive full funding.  In total, recipients received more than 92 percent of the funding they were eligible to receive.
 
“Seventeen years ago, AlohaCare was created by a group of community health centers to ensure Hawaii’s most vulnerable populations have access to the comprehensive health care services they need,” said John McComas, chief executive officer of AlohaCare.  “With Hawaii’s struggling economy and cutbacks in state and federal funding, Hawaii’s community health centers are facing extremely challenging times.” 
 
For each well child visit, parents were provided with complimentary gift cards for gas and groceries, as well as informational packets.
 
QIIP, MCHC has noted a remarkable improvement of a 10 percent increase in the number of patients having six well child visits by the age of 15 months.

“We provide health care services to more than 70 percent of our island’s keiki population,” said Jane Woolsey RN, QI and performance specialist at MCHC.  “Educating the parents of our young patients on the importance of well child visits, immunizations and age-related screenings has always been a challenge. The monies we received from AlohaCare provided us with the resources to offer parents incentives to bring their child in.”