As of February 1997, six more counties came under GBHC (Georgia Better Health Care). Medicaid’s primary case management program. These were Bibb, Twiggs. Peach, Houston, Chatham, and Effingham. The spring roll out of counties includes Jones, Monroe, Baldwin, Wilkinson, Johnson, Laurens, Truetlen, Bleckley. Dodge. Wheeler, Pulaski, Wilcox, Dooly. Macon, and Crawford. Fall 1997 will unfold the counties of Jackson, Madison, Clark, Oglethorpe, Oconee, Green. Telfair, Berrian, Cook, Lanier, Brooks. Lowndes, and Echols in the GBHC loop. The remaining counties will be implemented by December 1997.
GBHC is a soft approach to managed care, and the case management concept of the program can be a positive step for the patients. No longer will the patients feel they cannot find a provider who will assist them with their care. Some hospitals have bad negative encounters with the program, but we have decided at the Medical Center of Central Georgia to learn from the problems encountered by the hospitals who preceded us. We adhered to the message we heard of not properly "educating" the hospital staff as well as to the message or Medicaid patients not being "educated" on the program. We pulled our resources together and planned our course of implementation. The road has been bumpy, but we have weathered the first few months of GBHC, and feel we have not been as negatively impacted as some of our predecessors. This is a direct result of persistent education, departmental buy-in, and administrative support. The next few months will paint a clearer picture of the financial impact as well as the effects on patient care.
I recently spoke at a GSACCS/HFMA Spring Educational Seminar, sponsored by GHA, on our implementation process. It took five months to bring this process together and a group of dedicated, committed employees to make the program work. I outlined the "nuts and bolts" attached to each month's process, and will be happy to share it with anyone who would like a copy. Our intervention with the GBHC staff at DMA was very positive. Special recognition goes to Katherine Roeder from GBHC for her assistance with our staff. For the start-up procedures, I focused on the month to month implementation of GBHC in order to offer a "guideline" for other hospitals pending this program implementation. I remember how fragmented we felt in the beginning, and would have welcomed this type of information. Key points were formatting a steering committee and several sub-committees as well as using innovative ways of training.