Telehealth Connections for Children and Youth

Telehealth Connections is a project of the Institute for Child Health Policy at the University of Florida. The project employs outreach workers to talk to families in the Community Health Center (CHC) about insurance, and to assist them with insurance if they are interested. They also screen children for special health care needs. The project uses telehealth (basically secure video-conferencing) to link the CHC to Children's Medical Services (CMS). When a child is identified, the intake interview and evaluation can be conducted via the telehealth equipment, many times that very same day. This not only expedites the process but also alleviates travel and scheduling barriers. Once children are enrolled in CMS, they are assigned a nurse coordinator. The telehealth equipment is also used to support care coordination – families can talk to the nurse coordinator via the equipment (facilitated by the outreach coordinator), so can the PCP at the center, or any of the care providers.

The purpose of this project is to link Florida’s Title V program (CMS) and local Community Health Centers to:

- Reach and identify uninsured children with special health care needs in Florida and enroll them in insurance
- Focus on underserved communities that traditionally have faced numerous barriers to care, particularly those in the black and Hispanic communities, and children living in rural areas
- Use telemedicine to facilitate enrollment in CMS, care coordination, and access to specialty care
- Work with trusted community elders -- grandmothers -- as lay health partners to facilitate health-related outreach and support to children with special health care needs and their families.

In short, the project seeks to build a sustainable medical home for children with special health care needs in the safety net.

As of June, 2004 the program claimed the following results:

-409 families representing 820 uninsured children were provided with Application Assistance
-70% are Hispanic and 15% are African American
-28% of the parents are undocumented

Since inception of grandmother component, there has been an increase of 40% in the number of application assistance contacts.