Here are ways to treat the elderly and underserved in Florida, state health leaders say

Healthcare experts gathered Wednesday to discuss innovations in healthcare accessibility with a keen focus on helping members of underserved communities and the elderly.

Nancy Brinker, the founder and chair of Susan G. Komen and The Promise Fund, joined Dr. Gordon Chen, the chief medical officer of ChenMed, Florida Hospital Association President Bruce Reuben and Florida Blue’s South Florida Market President Penny Shaffer in a panel held as part of the Florida Priorities Summit 2018 at the University of Miami.

The experts spoke about the ways some hospitals and clinics are working to provide care to communities where residents may not be insured. Especially with lower-income or older people who are not on insurance, they said, providing a continuum of care and focusing on preventative medicine, not emergency room visits, can make a big difference in the care Floridians receive.

“Unfortunately, everything goes really well until it doesn’t,” Shaffer said. “We’ve got to go meet people where they are.”

Chen, who oversees all clinical activity for the medical practice that operates more than 50 centers in seven states, explained how companies like ChenMed are changing the economics of Medicare. The companies receive a fixed monthly stipend from private Medicare plans to cover their patients’ health needs, as opposed to a payment after each visit, according to Kaiser Health News.

“You don’t get to better health unless you can change behavior,” he said.

Reuben mentioned telemedicine services that charge about $60 per non-emergency consult, and walk-in clinics set up in some grocery stores in Florida.

He said it was more cost-effective in the long run to keep healthy people healthy than to wait until they need emergency medical services.

“All of this is basically a Band-Aid on the fact that we have so many people who do not have health insurance,” he said. “If you do not have health insurance, then you have haphazard access to healthcare.”

This story was originally published November 14, 2018 at 9:43 PM.