James Greene is the retired Director of Community Relations, one of the various titles he held while working at Upjohn and Pharmacia. He currently continues to serve the greater Kalamazoo community with his position on the Bronson Healthcare board, which he has served on since 1999. As a member of the board at Bronson, he was on the committee that was in charge of developing a needs assessment for the hospital, a requirement for every hospital under the Affordable Care Act. After conducting their needs assessment, the board and hospital realized that the next steps that were needed were to help with the enrollment process, as related to the Affordable Care Act.

Enrollment efforts went on through the development of a collaboration within the community called Enroll Kalamazoo.  Through Enroll Kalamazoo they publicized the collaboration and trained certified application counselors at Bronson Enroll, as well as throughout the community. Mr. Greene said that one of the main focuses of the enrollment efforts on behalf of Bronson were to help “get people a medical home as much as we possibly [could]”. As a result of having what he called a medical home, the Bronson board hoped that “visits to the ER for simple colds and things like that will decline, because that’s the most expensive place to treat those types of ailments.”

Additionally, Mr. Greene believed that with this new healthcare coverage, those who are currently uninsured will be most affected by this reform. He stated this was due to various factors, such as quality of care, physicians not accepting Medicaid, and the simple lack of knowledge that people have about their health care options. He believed that the “whole publicity around the ACA enrollment has educated the public in terms of what their options are.” Now with the new reform, various providers such as Bronson will be affected, in hope that the number of visits for minor implications will decline.  With the option of having a medical home, people “can get preventative treatment that they are currently not getting…In the emergency room, they really aren’t looking for preventative treatment, they’re looking for help with a specific ailment.” Mr. Greene said that the whole goal of Bronson’s needs assessment was to make the community a healthier place, which can be done by “having more people with a medical home and insurance to pay for it.”  Mr. Greene then went on to stress the collaborative efforts that resulted in the form of Enroll Kalamazoo. He said:    I think the data shows that there is need within the community for people to have a medical home, and that all the members of the collaboration were in agreement with this…they came together to try to get people enrolled, number one. And number two, once they were enrolled, to get them a medical home because…the health issues within the community are things that can be prevented if you get the proper care beforehand…all of those partners within Enroll Kalamazoo had that single focus, and that’s why it was so successful. They’re all marching to the same drumbeat.

What he took out of the Enroll Kalamazoo experience and his close work with the collaboration as a Bronson board member, was that “once the community decides what the problem is and…they want to address it in a collaborative manner, that we can be successful.” Mr. Greene said that the key to the community’s collaboration was a result of people working together for a “single purpose and doing it together as a collaborative, and all you heard was ‘Enroll Kalamazoo’”. He ended by saying, “…anytime you can get a collaboration to get together and not, I won’t say forget about the entity they are representing, but to look at the overall purpose of the collaboration and push that goal, that you can be successful.” Mr. Greene illustrates the sense of community that can be formed when there is a collective goal being worked towards by the people.