MASSACHUSETTS HEALTHY LIVING CENTER OF EXCELLENCE SECURES MORE THAN $1.3 MILLION
The Massachusetts Healthy Living Center of Excellence (HLCE), a collaboration between Hebrew SeniorLife and Elder Services of the Merrimack Valley, announced today that it has secured more than $1.3 million in funding over three years from the Tufts Health Plan Foundation and the John A. Hartford Foundation. The grants will fund a centralized infrastructure and six new regional coalitions to expand disease management and wellness programs across the Commonwealth and improve the way community-based groups, health care providers and consumers work together to improve care. This is a development of the Hartford Foundation’s grant to Partners in Care Foundation, of San Fernando, CA, to develop regional networks in Southern California and Massachusetts, that link community-based, social service agencies to the health care sector, with the goal of establishing an integrated health care and social services delivery system.”
The Massachusetts Healthy Living Center of Excellence (HLCE), a collaboration between Hebrew SeniorLife and Elder Services of the Merrimack Valley, announced today that it has secured more than $1.3 million in funding over three years from the Tufts Health Plan Foundation and the John A. Hartford Foundation. The grants will fund a centralized infrastructure and six new regional coalitions to expand disease management and wellness programs across the Commonwealth and improve the way community-based groups, health care providers and consumers work together to improve care. This is a development of the Hartford Foundation’s grant to Partners in Care Foundation, of San Fernando, CA, to develop regional networks in Southern California and Massachusetts, that link community-based, social service agencies to the health care sector, with the goal of establishing an integrated health care and social services delivery system.”
This infusion of private funding will enable the HLCE to address the growing need for health care consumers – mainly older adults – to better manage their chronic conditions and become active participants in their own care. According to a Health Policy Brief published in the February 2013 issue of Health Affairs, people actively involved in their health and health care tend to have better outcomes and incur lower costs.
The HLCE aims to accomplish this “triple aim”—better care, better health outcomes and lower costs – by making evidence-based disease management and wellness programs more easily replicated and sustainable across the Commonwealth, and making it easier for health care providers to refer their patients to these programs. Evidence-based programs, typically offered in community-based settings like senior centers, area agencies on aging, community health centers, hospitals, etc., focus on topics such as chronic disease self-management, healthy eating, physical activity, fall prevention, family caregiving and more.
“The HLCE is in essence creating an integrated delivery system in which health care systems, community-based social services and older adults collaborate as partners to improve care and lower costs,” said Jim Roosevelt, president of the Tufts Health Plan Foundation and CEO of Tufts Health Plan. “With all eyes on health care reform, this new model has the potential to set the stage for national change in the way health care is delivered and embraced.”
To read the entire press release, click here.