Being Uninsured Is Bad for Your Health: Can Medical Homes Play a Role in Treating the Uninsurance Ailment?

The Article in Brief

Being Uninsured Is Bad for Your Health: Can Medical Homes Play a Role in Treating the Uninsurance Ailment?

Jennifer E. DeVoe

Background In the United States, health insurance coverage is associated with better access to services and improved health outcomes.

What This Study Found A family physician reflects on the potential of primary care medical homes to partner with patients to reduce preventable mortality by helping them find and keep health insurance coverage. Ensuring all patients have the best and most continuous coverage available to them under existing and newly expanded programs may be as (or more) important than ensuring all patients have optimal blood pressure control, diabetes control, or timely cancer screenings. The author outlines how basic tenets of the chronic care model can be used to build systems that treat the United States' large "uninsurance" problem. Primary care clinicians are in a position to see how lack of insurance negatively affects health, and the author calls for the development of effective processes and tools within the medical home to help patients obtain health insurance, retain their coverage, or make important health insurance coverage decisions. Health care financing, she argues, should no longer be separate from the delivery of health care services.

Implications

• The author concludes that by adopting uninsurance and underinsurance as a chronic illness and applying the tenets and tools of the chronic care model to treat it, medical homes have the opportunity to improve population health and make a positive difference in the lives of patients.