Family physician: Blueprint funding stabilizes clinic but reporting, payment design strain capacity

Summary

Dr. Hannah Rabin told the House Health Care Committee that Blueprint for Health funding provides flexible support—community health workers, care coordinators and partial salaries—that helped her Richmond Family Medicine clinic stay solvent, but she warned that quality reporting and current payment design reduce clinical capacity and leave smaller practices vulnerable.

Dr. Hannah Rabin, a family physician at Richmond Family Medicine, told the House Health Care Committee on April 24 that Blueprint for Health funding provides flexible staff support that helped her clinic maintain services but that reporting requirements and payment design create operational strain.

Rabin said Richmond Family Medicine uses Blueprint funds to pay a community health worker, a referral/care coordinator and part of a nurse’s time for transition-of-care follow-ups. “The total amount is about 7% of our total income,” she said, adding that Blueprint also passes through Medicare lump sums and provides some Medicaid per-member-per-month payments. She told lawmakers her clinic serves nearly 7,000 patients across eight providers and that, in the first quarter, 79 patients accessed the community health worker while the discharge nurse contacted 124 patients after hospitalization.

The physician described how predictable…

Family physician: Blueprint funding stabilizes clinic but reporting, payment design strain capacity

Summary

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