Access to Health Care

 

Advancing access to safe, affordable, quality health care to all Kentuckians.

Healthy Kentucky believes in innovative health care delivery systems, strengthening public health infrastructure, and supporting collaborative efforts that address the social drivers of health to ensure Kentuckians receive care responsive to their health and health care needs.

 
 

  • Five-year goal: Increase the capacity of the primary care, behavioral and oral health workforce to deliver high quality, timely ad accessible patient-centered care.

    • Having health insurance is not the same as having access to quality health care.

      Health insurance coverage is essential for people to get preventative care and afford medications. Still, even with coverage, copays and medication costs can make managing chronic conditions an economic challenge.

      Other factors include the distance to a health care provider, transportation, and cultural barriers that may delay or negatively impact whether a person receives screenings and consultations.

  • Five-year goal: Increase the proportion of Kentuckians who receive recommended age-appropriate vaccines.

    By the Numbers:

    • Kentucky ranks 24th in the rate of adults receiving recommended immunizations.

    • Kentucky ranks 16th in the rate of children ages 19 months to 35 months receiving all recommended doses of the combined seven-vaccine series (diphtheria and tetanus toxoids and acellular pertussis (DTaP) vaccine; measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine; poliovirus vaccine; Haemophilus influenza type b (Hib) vaccine; hepatitis B (HepB) vaccine; varicella vaccine; and pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV).

  • Five-year goal: Increase the proportion of adults who receive appropriate cancer screening.

    Why: Kentucky ranks last (50th) in the cancer mortality rate.

    • Kentucky ranks 2nd in Lung Cancer Screening.
      Fifteen percent of Kentucky adults were screened — significantly higher than the national average.

      In Kentucky, the rates of new lung cancer cases rank 51st and are significantly higher than the national rate.

      However, over the past five years, the rate of new cases improved by 11 percent.

    • Kentucky ranks 39th in Breast Cancer Screening. Just under 76 percent of Kentucky women aged 50 – 74 have had a mammogram within the past two years.

  • Five-year goal: Increase the proportion of local public health jurisdictions that have developed a community health-improvement plan.

    Learn more about community health-improvement plans here.

    Read the research about how community networks can lead to long-term population health improvements.

    Learn about Systems for Action and its effort to build a Culture of Health.

  • Five-year goal: Enact legislation to develop an effective and feasible approach for using all-payer claims databases (APCDs) to advance the goal of improving Kentucky’s health.

    Clear information about our paid health care services is necessary to achieve the triple aim of better health, better quality, and lower cost for Kentuckians. Furthermore, an APCD in Kentucky can promote equity in our health care delivery system, allowing early recognition of health disparities across race, geography, and socioeconomic status.

    All-payer claims databases facilitate such efforts by aggregating data on health care services paid for by health insurers and public programs, thereby offering a broad perspective on quality of care, utilization, and cost.

    All Kentuckians benefit when paid healthcare claims data is collected into one database. Reports can be generated and provided to policymakers interested in potential solutions for long-term health and health care improvement.

    Public health — APCDs support recognizing emerging trends, such as cancer incidence and variations in treatment

    Health policy — APCDs enable data-driven policy, help avoid legislating or regulating on the basis of conventional wisdom or anecdotes

    Research — APCDs are a trove of valuable data on all sorts of things — from orphan diseases to socioeconomic determinants of health to effects of health insurance models

    Transparency — APCDs allow for provider comparisons, pricing, consumer choice — all drive improvement

    Consumer education — APCDs inform consumers so they may intelligently consider their options.

    The following reports could potentially be pulled from an APCD:

    • Quality metrics by hospital and other healthcare settings

    • Healthcare facilities’ performance in areas such as hospital acquired conditions, infection rates, readmission rates, C-section rates, and procedure count by surgeon

    • Prevalence of opioid use in Kentucky as it relates to public and private pharmaceutical claims

    • Health data by provider, region, incident cause, and prevalence

    • Population health reporting focused on state issues to demonstrate value

 
 

Our collaborations in the area of access to health care include:

  • Kentucky Partnership for Health Improvement (KyPHI)

    • Healthy Kentucky serves as the backbone organization for the Kentucky Partnership for Health Improvement, which aims to work together to make measurable improvements in the health status of Kentucky’s individuals, families, and communities.

  • Health Literacy Kentucky

Access to Quality Health Care Grantees:

  • Kentucky Voices for Health (KVH)

    • KVH promotes policies that ensure equitable access to affordable, safe, and effective integrated health care services through the following:

      • Ensuring that Kentuckians have a say in the decisions that affect their health;

      • Increasing the number of Kentuckians with healthcare coverage;

      • Increase the availability of qualified providers;

      • Examining policies that facilitate equitable access to quality healthcare services without barriers;

      • Monitoring and mitigating barriers to coverage and care; and,

      • Promoting policies that align with consumer needs for more affordable coverage, higher quality healthcare services, improved health outcomes and more cost-effective care.

  • Kentucky Equal Justice Center (KEJC)

    • KEJC works toward access to health coverage and consumer-friendly enrollment systems for all Kentuckians, with a special focus on immigrant, English as a Second Language, homeless, sexually exploited, and justice-involved populations;

    • Affordable, high quality care for all Kentuckians; and,

    • Empowered consumers who value health coverage and take advantage of preventive care, chronic disease care, and substance use treatment.

  • Kentucky Equal Justice Center Health Law Fellow

    • The KEJC Health Law Fellow works on reconstruction of consumer-friendly health care enrollment and coverage;

    • Consumer protections against medical debt collection;

    • Improved healthcare access for everyone; and,

    • Policymaking based on consumer experience and facts, instead of stereotypes.