James Greene is the retired Director of Community Relations, one of the\u00c2\u00a0various titles he held while working at Upjohn and Pharmacia. He currently\u00c2\u00a0continues to serve the greater Kalamazoo community with his position on the\u00c2\u00a0Bronson Healthcare board, which he has served on since 1999. As a member of the\u00c2\u00a0board at Bronson, he was on the committee that was in charge of developing a needs\u00c2\u00a0assessment for the hospital, a requirement for every hospital under the Affordable\u00c2\u00a0Care Act. After conducting their needs assessment, the board and hospital realized\u00c2\u00a0that the next steps that were needed were to help with the enrollment process, as\u00c2\u00a0related to the Affordable Care Act.<\/p>\n
Enrollment efforts went on through the development of a collaboration\u00c2\u00a0within the community called Enroll Kalamazoo. \u00c2\u00a0Through Enroll Kalamazoo they publicized the collaboration and\u00c2\u00a0trained certified application counselors at Bronson Enroll, as well as throughout the\u00c2\u00a0community. Mr. Greene said that one of the main focuses of the enrollment efforts on\u00c2\u00a0behalf of Bronson were to help \u00e2\u20ac\u0153get people a medical home as much as we possibly\u00c2\u00a0[could]\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. As a result of having what he called a medical home, the Bronson board hoped\u00c2\u00a0that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153visits to the ER for simple colds and things like that will decline, because that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00c2\u00a0the most expensive place to treat those types of ailments.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Additionally, Mr. Greene believed that with this new healthcare coverage,\u00c2\u00a0those who are currently uninsured will be most affected by this reform. He stated\u00c2\u00a0this was due to various factors, such as quality of care, physicians not accepting\u00c2\u00a0Medicaid, and the simple lack of knowledge that people have about their health care options.\u00c2\u00a0He believed that the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153whole publicity around the ACA enrollment has educated the\u00c2\u00a0public in terms of what their options are.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Now with the new reform, various\u00c2\u00a0providers such as Bronson will be affected, in hope that the number of visits\u00c2\u00a0for minor implications will decline. \u00c2\u00a0With the option of having a medical\u00c2\u00a0home, people \u00e2\u20ac\u0153can get preventative treatment that they are currently not getting\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6In\u00c2\u00a0the emergency room, they really aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t looking for preventative treatment, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re\u00c2\u00a0looking for help with a specific ailment.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Mr. Greene said that the whole goal of\u00c2\u00a0Bronson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s needs assessment was to make the community a healthier place, which\u00c2\u00a0can be done by \u00e2\u20ac\u0153having more people with a medical home and insurance to pay for it.” \u00c2\u00a0Mr. Greene then went on to stress the collaborative efforts that resulted in the form\u00c2\u00a0of Enroll Kalamazoo. He said: \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0I think the data shows that there is need within the community for people\u00c2\u00a0to have a medical home, and that all the members of the collaboration were\u00c2\u00a0in agreement with this\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6they came together to try to get people enrolled,\u00c2\u00a0number one. And number two, once they were enrolled, to get them a\u00c2\u00a0medical home because\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6the health issues within the community are things\u00c2\u00a0that can be prevented if you get the proper care beforehand\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6all of those\u00c2\u00a0partners within Enroll Kalamazoo had that single focus, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why it was\u00c2\u00a0so successful. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re all marching to the same drumbeat.<\/p>\n
What he took out of the Enroll Kalamazoo experience and his close work with the\u00c2\u00a0collaboration as a Bronson board member, was that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153once the community decides\u00c2\u00a0what the problem is and…they want to address it in a collaborative manner,\u00c2\u00a0that we can be successful.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Mr. Greene said that the key to the community\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00c2\u00a0collaboration was a result of people working together for\u00c2\u00a0a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153single purpose and doing it together as a collaborative, and all you heard\u00c2\u00a0was \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcEnroll Kalamazoo\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. He ended by saying, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6anytime you can get a collaboration\u00c2\u00a0to get together and not, I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say forget about the entity they are representing, but\u00c2\u00a0to look at the overall purpose of the collaboration and push that goal, that you can\u00c2\u00a0be successful.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Mr. Greene illustrates the sense of community that can be formed\u00c2\u00a0when there is a collective goal being worked towards by the people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An interview with James Greene, the retired Director of Community Relations at Pharmacia Corporation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.kzoo.edu\/acastorieskzoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.kzoo.edu\/acastorieskzoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.kzoo.edu\/acastorieskzoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.kzoo.edu\/acastorieskzoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.kzoo.edu\/acastorieskzoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.kzoo.edu\/acastorieskzoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":310,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.kzoo.edu\/acastorieskzoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions\/310"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.kzoo.edu\/acastorieskzoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.kzoo.edu\/acastorieskzoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.kzoo.edu\/acastorieskzoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.kzoo.edu\/acastorieskzoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}