COUNTY OF SAN MATEO

Inter-Departmental Correspondence

Health Services Agency

DATE:

July 28, 2003

BOARD MEETING DATE:

September 9, 2003

TO:

Honorable Board of Supervisors

FROM:

Margaret Taylor, Director of Health Services

SUBJECT:

Semi-Annual Report on the Children's Health Initiative

Recommendation

Accept the semi-annual report of the Children's Health Initiative.

Background

In 2002 your Board established and funded the San Mateo County Children's Health Initiative (CHI) to address community-wide concern for the 17,000 county children who lacked access to comprehensive health insurance coverage. With your actions, a broad-based, local coalition collaborated to provide easier access to two existing government funded insurance programs, Medi-Cal and Healthy Families, and develop and implement a third new program, the Healthy Kids. Starting in January, San Mateo has offered all children residing in low-income and middle-income households, regardless of documentation status, with comprehensive medical, dental and vision health insurance coverage.

Discussion

San Mateo County is well on its way to improving the health of all its children through its universal coverage initiative. The attached report provides your Board with an update on CHI program during its first six months of operation. Highlights to date include:

· Enrolling approximately 9,000 children into Medi-Cal, Healthy Families, and Healthy Kids;

· Broadening the outreach and enrollment assistance network, enabling CHI to reach out to the unions, childcare organizations, schools, and faith-based sites;

· Designing and implementing the One-e-App, a universal web-based enrollment system that will enable families to apply for the Medi-Cal, Healthy Families and Healthy Kids programs using one enrollment application;

· Providing technical assistance to other counties such as Santa Cruz, San Joaquin, and Tulare to create their own county specific CHI programs; and

· Contracting with national evaluators to investigate the impacts of providing health insurance coverage to all children in San Mateo County.

Over the next several months, CHI will work on overcoming several additional challenges related to outreach, enrollment, retention, eligibility determination, and sustainability. It will continue to reach out to higher income households (250% to 400% federal income level), target the business community, incorporate the new One-e-App into enrollment activities, work to retain coverage for existing Healthy Kids members, improve the turn-around time for eligibility determination, and increase its fundraising to ensure sustainability.

Vision Alignment

Efforts of the Children's Health Initiative keep the commitment of Ensuring Basic Health and Safety for all and goal number 5: Residents have access to health care and preventive care. CHI contributes to this commitment and goal by providing health care coverage to all children from low-income and middle-income families.

Fiscal Impact

The projected CHI budget for Fiscal Year 03-04 is $4.6 million with $1.5 million earmarked from the Solid Waste Fund and $3.1 million appropriated from First 5 San Mateo County, private foundations, and the Sequoia and Peninsula Healthcare Districts. The projected CHI budget for Fiscal Year 04-05 is $6 million with a fiscal impact on the Solid Waste Fund of $2 million.