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Published on: 4/7/2009
Last Visited: 4/11/2009
Pastor Ralph Hodge of Second Baptist Church on South Side is hopeful, yet guarded.
"It looks like they might be trying," says Hodge, who will have met with university officials twice in recent weeks, and who is sorely disappointed with VCU's inaction since the group first approached officials a year ago.
"They didn't change a thing - nothing changed last year.
I think they thought we were going to go away."
The request Hodge, Nelson and RISC make is simple on its face: Find a way to use more of the $104 million toward preventative care, and the basic cost of indigent care will decrease, allowing more indigent patients to get better treatment.
At a bare minimum, Hodge says, his group wonders why the university doesn't work to promote the program among indigent patents.
"Why not promote it like Bon Secours is promoting [primary care]?
Hodge asks.
Though Bon Secours specifically targets indigents, its recent marketing campaign has focused on the importance of a medical home for patients, with a regular physician who knows your troubles.
"VCU needs to take the lead in providing medical care - as someone receiving federal and state dollars," Hodge says.
Instead, the university uses its $104 million to spend about $500 per month, per patient, says Hodge - far in excess of what it might cost simply to provide each of those 40,000 patients with a basic HMO-style plan.
A recent VCU presentation confirms this: "per member, per month costs [were] $511 in 2006 for Virginia Coordinated Care for the uninsured program."
"You could almost sign them up for Trigon or Cigna and get them insurance," Hodge says.
In a meeting with the university's Retchen in April 2008, Hodge says the university told the advocacy group that it wasn't financially feasible to promote the program to such a degree and still afford the basic care currently being provided.
Hodge is unconvinced.
A similar program that serves a much larger population did exactly that.
Virginia's Family Access to Medical Insurance Security program, known as FAMIS, cost the state and federal government about $169 million in 2007 to provide full insurance coverage for almost 82,500 children.
When compared with the university's $104 million for 40,000 patients who mostly receive occasional services, Hodge believes the differences are stark.
"When they wanted to get all the kids on the FAMIS program," he says, "that was everywhere - key chains, billboards, you couldn't get away from it."
Preventative care makes sense, he says, as the Bon Secours campaign would indicate, as a proven cost-saving approach to any community health initiative.
"If [medical leaders] are saying it's best practice for the paying customers, why is it not best practice for the people the government is paying for?
Hodge asks.
"We're not backing down from that."
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