UC, Cincinnati Children's Receive Expanded Funding for Health Care Access

CINCINNATI—For the third year in a row, an interdisciplinary team from the University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Nursing and College of Medicine and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center has received funding from the Ohio Department of Medicaid to train the next generation of health care providers to work with Ohio’s Medicaid patients.

Ohio’s Medicaid Educational Technical and Policy Program (MEDTAPP) awarded the team funding to continue and expand their work begun in May 2014. The team, led by UC Associate Professor of Nursing Diana McIntosh, PhD, will continue efforts that include creating new training programs, collaborating to build an integrated community clinic in Cincinnati’s East End and recruiting trainees to stay in Ohio post-graduation to work with Medicaid patients. 

Since its inception, UC’s MEDTAPP partnership has worked to train and place psychiatrists, primary care physicians, developmental and behavioral health pediatricians, advanced practice nurses and other practitioners to serve Ohio Medicaid beneficiaries of all ages.

This training has included new educational programs at the medical student, post-graduate, resident, fellowship and practicing physician levels, and a partnership with Interact for Health and the Cincinnati Health Department at Cincinnati Public Schools’ Riverview East Academy.

"We’re very excited to be able to continue and expand our MEDTAPP efforts with this latest award,” says McIntosh, who also coordinates the College of Nursing’s psychiatric mental health post-master’s certificate program. "Our project is unique in that we’re an interdisciplinary team working on both individual and shared projects—but all of our efforts support our goals of improving healthcare training and access to care for Ohio’s Medicaid population.”

This year’s $1.8 million project is partially funded by the MEDTAPP Healthcare Access (HCA) Initiative and uses federal financial participation funds through the Ohio Department of Medicaid. Other funding includes cost-share contributions from the College of Nursing, the Department of Family and Community Medicine, Cincinnati Children’s and community partner Interact for Health. 

The MEDTAPP HCA Initiative partners with colleges and universities in Ohio to support the development and retention of additional health care providers to better serve the Ohio Medicaid population using emerging, interdisciplinary and evidence-based care models. Currently, the initiative has 10 university partners as participants with 16 total projects. MEDTAPP HCA Initiative funding supports teaching and training activities associated with this program and does not support the delivery of Medicaid eligible services.

"Almost $300,000 of the 2015-2016 MEDTAPP HCA project will go towards new expansion activities in two key priority areas,” she adds. "Those include developing training programs that focus on increasing behavioral health competencies within primary care and creating new collaborative partnerships with other MEDTAPP sites in Ohio.”