UCLA study shows Medicaid costs ...( Medicaid costs can shrink significantly...),Health

Medicaid costs can shrink significantly when Head Start parents are trained to handle common ailments Medicaid costs for a child's trip to an emergency room or clinic can be reduced annually by at least $198 per family when Head Start parents are provided with easy-to-understand health-care guidance, according to a first-of-its kind study by the UCLA/Johnson & Johnson Health Care Institute.

The institute's goal is to train approximately 12,000 Head Start families nationwide by 2005, which could mean a significant savings to Medicaid of nearly $2.4 million annually in direct costs associated with unnecessary emergency room and clinic visits. Using $200 as the average cost for a visit to a hospital's emergency room and $30 for a clinic visit, researchers at UCLA estimate that the savings could reach many millions per year if funds were available to provide health-literacy training for the nearly 1 million families served by Head Start. Most Head Start parents depend on Medicaid for their health-care needs. (See chart A.)

Parents who participated in the UCLA/Johnson & Johnson Health Care Institute's pilot and follow-up training sessions became better informed about their children's health, reducing by 48 percent the number of unnecessary trips to an emergency room and by 37.5 percent to a clinic for routine illnesses, such as a cold, cough or mild fever. This also translated to a dramatic drop in the number of lost days at work (43 percent) and at school (41 percent). (See chart B & chart C.)

Further, the studies documented a profound improvement in parents' confidence in trusting their own good judgment. Parents reported universally that, for the first time in their lives,
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15-Apr-2004

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