HPSM is proud of our Community Care Settings Pilot program (CCSP). This innovative program has helped dozens of our older members with multiple chronic conditions move from nursing facilities back into their own homes.
CCSP’s success has inspired other health advocates as well. For example, a recent article in Stanford Social Innovation Review praised CCSP for improving people’s quality of life while greatly cutting healthcare costs. Here’s an excerpt:
One example of a robust investment in housing as an alternative to institutional care is the Community Care Settings Pilot of the Health Plan of San Mateo (HPSM), a nonprofit Medicaid managed care organization (MCO) in Northern California. HPSM wanted to give low-income, disabled members living in nursing homes more options when it came to where they lived. Many members didn’t need to live in nursing homes, but did, due to system inefficiencies. The organization has so far successfully moved 124 people from nursing homes to independent housing with supportive services, where they have much more choice in terms of how they spend their time, what they eat, and so on. After leaving the nursing home, these individuals not only reported much greater life satisfaction, but also used significantly fewer health care resources. Members’ health care costs (including the portion of housing costs the MCO paid) were 50 percent lower in the six months after the move than in the previous six months, saving the health plan $2 million over that time.