In an effort to better understand the current state of access to specialty care and to support movement within the safety net to address the problem, the California Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems (CAPH), the California Primary Care Association (CPCA) and Kaiser Permanente (KP) formed a partnership called the Specialty Care Access Initiative (SCAI), which is supported by KP Community Benefit. Started in 2006, SCAI seeks to:
- Identify barriers to specialty care access and demand;
- Establish solutions to increase specialty care access and demand;
- Distribute knowledge about barriers and solutions; and
- Create an advocacy strategy for needed change.
To gain an initial understanding of specialty care access issues in California, the Partnership worked with a consultant to develop and gather data through a statewide baseline survey. The data were collected from California public hospital systems and California community health clinics (CCHCs), and have helped SCAI begin to characterize the current state of specialty care access among California’s major safety net providers.
Concurrently, SCAI began to collect qualitative data by hosting statewide roundtable discussions, which provide a forum for public hospital system and CCHC clinicians, administrators, and other stakeholders to spread knowledge, share promising practices, and increase networking opportunities. To date, the roundtables have focused on topics such as E-health, E-referral, Scope of Practice, and Protocols and Guidelines.
SCAI is also collecting additional qualitative and quantitative data through the development of three discussion papers. The discussion papers address topics such as expanded scope of practice for primary care providers and communication, coordination and collaboration between safety net provider systems to address specialty care access. In addition, SCAI is in the process of creating toolkits and resource guides that will be available in early 2009. The toolkits/resource guides will address the topics of telemedicine and scope of practice and will be made available through the SNI website at www.safetynetinstitute.org.
Contact: Mary Gregory