The Scituate Health Plan Overview
Local, Affordable, Comprehensive Health Care
The Scituate Health Plan, currently in the initial phase, will be a comprehensive health care program offering residents and town employees of Scituate, Rhode Island both a unique health care insurance product and a unique health care delivery system, with an emphasis on locally-provided primary and preventive care.
The plan will draw on two health care innovations to improve care coordination and cost control - a health care financing system called Health Savings Accounts, and a community-based approach to health care called "population based primary health care" - two innovations that have never been combined or implemented in a widespread way. The plan's program elements are:
1) population based primary care, in which the
primary care, preventive care, and outpatient health care services are delivered
to a geographically-defined patient population in one location, and are tracked
and managed by staff physicians;
2) tax-preferred health savings accounts ("patient savings
accounts"), in which patients pay for out-of-pocket primary care and
outpatient services from a savings account set up for this purpose; and
3) high-deductible insurance coverage, to provide insurance coverage for
hospital stays or other expensive health care services with costs that exceed
the funds in a patient's savings account.
The Scituate Health Plan will function based on a very different model of delivery and measurement of health care services - one in which people in a defined geographic region are known to the providers who serve them and whose health care is viewed in the context of concern for and commitment to the health of the whole town.
The Plan's design team is made up of local residents who are charged with developing the model in an open process with community input. In supporting the development of this plan, the Town believes that the Scituate Health Plan can be developed over the next several years and can, when fully implemented, serve as a model for cost- effective, locally-provided health care, community-wide health education and preventive care, and the development of community-wide information about health outcomes.
In addition, the Scituate Health Plan will
demonstrate the effectiveness of community-based health centers for all
populations - not just the underserved urban and rural poor - by implementing
this program in a middle-class, semi-rural, well insured community.