Area joint effort for uninsured

Local health care providers are often in competition, but they have decided to play nice when it comes to medical care for the uninsured in Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester counties.

With coordination from Trident United Way, more than two dozen private, state and federal agencies announced last week they will work together in what Trident United Way calls an "unprecedented collaborative effort" to develop a network of care for low-income, uninsured residents of the Lowcountry.

"All of the participants in this collaboration, many of whom might be competitors or rivals in a different setting, are committed to working together to meet the health care needs of everyone in our community," says David Dunlap, president and CEO of Roper St. Francis Healthcare.

The group, which includes the four local acute-care hospitals, has met for more than a year to assess the needs of the uninsured and how best to address them.

It recently secured a technical-assistance grant from the statewide group AccessHealth SC, a program of the South Carolina Hospital Association, with support from the Duke Endowment, to create networks of care.

"No money changed hands with this grant," says Anne Bergin, Trident United Way director of health. "AccessHealth came to town and encouraged us to create a collaborative effort. We did that and that's how we won the technical assistance grant."

The next steps are to create a community health system profile and apply for funding from the Duke Endowment to provide the necessary care to those who need it, says Chris Kerrigan, president of Trident United Way.

"The news is the collaborative effort of everybody coming together on this," Bergin says. "We're all coming together to say, 'We know there's a problem and we'll do what it takes to fix it.' We still have to figure out what that means to each one of our organizations, but whatever it takes, we're saying 'yes.' The more we work together, the further existing resources can go."

The group estimates that nearly 150,000 people in the three-county area, more than 20 percent, don't have health insurance. Instead, they skip routine medical and preventive care and wind up in hospital emergency rooms, visits that ultimately cost those who have insurance.

"Whenever free care is provided, somebody has to pay for it," Bergin says. "Those costs are reassigned to people with commercial insurance."

Estimates are that as much as 40 percent of insurance premiums go toward the uninsured, according to Trident United Way.

"Folks with no insurance have nowhere to turn," Bergin says. "If we can get a system in place where they can be in a doctor-patient relationship, if they needed to be moved on for X-rays or prescriptions or to see specialists, then there would be a defined process for them and they could be seen."

In addition to the hospitals, participants include several area clinics and agencies, such as the Coastal Community Foundation and DHEC Region 7.

"The list of participants is not a static list, but we quite literally could not fit any more bodies in the room," Bergin says of the planning meetings.

She says most of the work is still ahead.

"We don't have anything tangible yet," she says. "We're shooting to have something by late spring. At this point, this message we want to share is that all these great organizations said 'yes' and we don't even know what that means yet, but we'd like to find a way to make health care less haphazard and fragmented for the people who need care. It's a story that's just beginning to be written."

Brenda Rindge covers family and parenting issues. Reach her at 937-5713 or brindge@postandcourier.com.

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