A New Era of Managed Health Care at Home

By Joe Russell, Executive Director, OCHCH.

OCHCH is engaged in a full-scale effort to get our member agencies better reimbursement rates and better regulations. One of the more pressing issues with this focus has been around managed care.

Over the past three years OCHCH has attempted to address member concerns with the Ohio Department of Medicaid (ODM), the Ohio General Assembly, and even the health plans themselves, but issues with managed care continue to be pervasive.

Well we’ve had enough. We’ve had enough with the plans kicking our members around. We’ve had enough with pre-auths. We’ve had enough with NOT getting paid. The list goes on and on. Subsequently we’re no longer going to wait for others to act. We are placing the future into our own hands.

I’m so very excited to announce the creation of the OCHCH managed care network, called the Ohio Community at Home Network (OCHN), aimed at resolving your agency’s managed care issues.

OCHN will serve as a sibling organization to OCHCH, but will focus exclusively on managed care topics for those OCHCH members that decide to join OCHN. OCHCH will still engage on a variety of managed care issues including government advocacy, while OCHN will get more into the nitty-gritty of managed care such as negotiating reimbursement and contract terms, and resolving contract issues among other things.

I’ll be traveling around the state throughout the month of February to explain how the network will operate and allow home health and hospice agencies the opportunity to join the network ahead of the official March launch. The hope is that OCHN can begin offering the network to Medicaid Managed Care Plans (MCPs), Medicare Advantage, and commercial managed care plans shortly after the March launch.

We’re so excited for OCHN! A ton of hard-work has gone into its creation, which marks a new era in managed care for health care at home agencies.

Please join us at one of the upcoming FREE informational events that are open to all OCHCH members in good standing. Click here for the locations, dates, and to register! See you soon!