CHW Financing Study

[SPEAKER]

Advancing Community Health Worker Practice and Utilization: The Focus on Financing is a landmark 2006 report on financing options for CHW employment produced by the National Fund for Medical Education, housed at the University of California, San Francisco’s Center for the Health Professions.

This report is widely considered to be the first and only systematic study of the financing of CHW services on a national level. You can download a free copy using the web address on this slide.

The report includes a review of four main models, each with a different funding source, and showing a range of mechanisms by which funding eventually reaches the CHW employer. The models are:

• Grants or contracts from federal or state government agencies
• Grants or contracts from charitable organizations
• Reimbursement or standard per-capita payment from public or private insurance groups
• Operating budgets of government general funds

Details of these and other models are summarized in a graphic on page 9 of the report. The graphic is a bit too complicated to present in this e-learning format, but it could be a useful reference as you study options for your state. In our final Session, we will take an in-depth look at one example examined in the report, the Minnesota Medicaid CHW reimbursement policy.