EveryStep recently completed a series of educational sessions that brought EveryStep and other organizations together with Iowa Medicaid Managed Care Organizations to increase collaboration between the two important halves of quality patient care. Joining EveryStep in the series were WellPoint, Molina, and Iowa Total Care.
“EveryStep’s Community Health Programs and other organizations’ professional staff work with clients every day who are Iowa Medicaid MCO members. It’s important that staff who work with members have a strong understanding of what an MCO is, and what services, beyond the medical visit payments, are available.,” says Molly Gosselink, EveryStep Vice President of Community Health Services, “These sessions bring together the MCO workforce and the Community Organization to learn and grow in their knowledge of each other.”
The sessions offered a chance for MCOs and EveryStep employees to refresh each other on best practices, learn what’s new, and open a dialogue between important partners.
“Our teams work closely with MCO community leaders often. Through these meetings we recognized that it’s important to update all staff on changes that occur with MCO benefits. We launched this series to start the conversation,” Molly says, “We look forward to continuing to provide these updates on a regular basis.”
A big part of starting that conversation was learning what makes each of Iowa Medicaid’s three MCOs unique and how each can differently work to accomplish the same positive outcomes for clients. “Attendees learned about the differences and similarities between the 3three MCOs. Additionally, they learned what the benefits are for each member and how to help their clients access the resources available,” Molly says, “A prime example of this is how pregnant mothers can access important safety items like car seats through the MCO programming.”
Molly says she’s confident that the conversation will continue between all involved partners after seeing the turnout for this first series of events. “We had roughly 50 attendees at each session and fantastic questions for each of the MCO representatives. Loads of information was shared, and relationships were built. We are interested in providing some form of these sessions each summer,” she says, “Changes occur both on the MCO side and the community organization side every year, so keeping these relationships top of mind is important.”
