Patricia Bradford

My mornings this week have been spent sitting in the bleachers while watching my children go through the process of learning how to swim. This session has been very different than our previous swimming lessons. This is partly because we are trying a new program at a new pool, but mostly because my youngest is now old enough to be in her own class, as opposed to doing “parent-child” classes with me, and so I’ve been relegated to the role of spectator.
The water lover in me has itched at times ...

Every community includes individuals who experience a variety of complex health, behavioral, and social challenges. These individuals face not only poor health outcomes for themselves, they often consume a disproportionate share of emergency and healthcare resources. This high use of resources can often be traced back to unmet needs which then lead to crisis situations....

Approximately one out of every five Americans rely on Medicaid for their access to healthcare resources. This works out to about 70 million people, many of whom belong to vulnerable populations or face other serious challenges. What resources these individuals can access and how those resources are delivered is critical to their chances of achieving positive long-term outcomes. However, different communities face different challenges and so there is no one-size-fits-all solution....

In February 2019, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) issued related proposals for policy changes which are designed to improve interoperability and increase patient access to their own electronic health information (EHI).

Under the CMS rule, which applies to Medicare Advantage (MA) organizations, state Medicaid and CHIP FFS programs, Medicaid managed care plans, CHIP managed care entities, and...

There is mounting evidence that screening for the barriers created by the social determinants of health (SDoH) has many positive benefits when addressing the needs of vulnerable populations. Diagnostic accuracy improves when physicians have a complete picture of a patient’s medical and social history. This same information also allows physicians to focus on the whole person instead of just treating the symptoms or disease...

The roughly 60 million people who make their homes in rural communities across the United States are often faced with a unique set of challenges to the goal of achieving and maintaining good health. For example, rural Americans are statistically more likely to have a chronic illness than the general population, while simultaneously being less likely to have adequate insurance coverage. Rural Americans are also more likely to be living under the federal poverty line, which impacts their health...

For many individuals, particularly those who face significant challenges, fragmented care is a critical barrier to achieving positive outcomes. Necessary services are often split between healthcare and social services and are then broken down even further by medical specialties, social service needs, and even payer regulations. In order to access care, patients must find a way to first locate and then coordinate with each of the different providers or organizations that address their specific...

According to The UN Refugee Agency, also known as UNHCR, over 68 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced from their homes. The majority of these individuals, around 40 million, are still residing within the borders of their own countries and are known as internally displaced persons, or IDP. The remaining 28 million people who have not only fled their homes but have also fled their native countries are classified in one of two categories, refugees or asylum seekers.