Long on CBO outreach and preparing for coverage disruption
Long says NYC Care has always prioritized community engagement through 20 contracted CBO partners and offers appointments within 14 days. He warns that 'coverage disruption' will define the coming period, with recertification and work requirements creating temporary gaps that NYC Care must catch.
Yeah, so right now, just to zoom out for a second, NYC Care, since 2019, has always sought to do as much community engagement as we can.
It says that every New Yorker knows that health care is their human right if they enroll in this program, and we welcome everybody through our doors.
An important way we do that, by the way, is that we offer an appointment to you within 14 days of your phone call.
So if you call us, we're going to offer you maybe an appointment near to where you live, maybe a few blocks down the road, but always within 14 days.
So in terms of to your question about how we've sought to increase or grow the program, I would say we've continued to work with our 20 contracted CBO partners to continue to get the word out about the program and then enroll you in the program
if you're not eligible for health insurance and then make you that appointment within 14 days.
One important point I just want to draw out, because I'll quote you from earlier,
Turn this east because it's resonated with me.
Coverage disruption is going to be the name of the game going forward here.
It's not like people are just going to fall off of Medicaid and just enroll in NYC care and that's problem solved.
People are going to have changes in eligibility.
There's a recertification piece that's going to change.
Work requirements, they may not get their certification in time and then have to submit later, so they may be temporarily in NYC care.
So what we want to do is we want to, today, make sure that everybody knows not only is this program a place where you can go treat health care as a human right in our city, but if you fall off of health insurance, the program will catch you.
So that's a transition that we're making in the messaging that we're working through our community-based organizations to do.
And we expect that, especially with these changes coming up associated with not only the EP5 changes, which I can go into more detail about, but the upcoming Medicaid changes, predominantly recertification and work requirements, we're going to need to catch more people than ever.
So now our goal is to get as ready as possible so that every New Yorker can always know that health care is a human right through the NYC Care Program.
Thank you.