SYRACUSE — The New York State Department of Health and NY State of Health have selected HealtheConnections Health Planning to spearhead the navigator program for Onondaga County.
NY State of Health is New York’s health-plan marketplace for purchasing health-care coverage under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the federal health-care reform law.
HealtheConnections is pronounced “healthy connections,” according to the organization’s website.
HealtheConnections Health Planning is partnering with four community agencies to provide navigators who are located near and “culturally engaged” with their respective neighborhoods, the organization said in a news release.
The partner agencies include Benefit Specialists of NY, Northside Urban Partnership, the Salvation Army, and the South Side Innovation Center, according to HealtheConnections.
New York’s navigator program requires each county to designate individuals at select organizations to facilitate access to health insurance.
The navigators will provide culturally “competent, linguistically appropriate and universally accessible assistance” for health-benefit applications, HealtheConnections said.
Each agency will have one navigator available to provide services that include educating potential enrollees about the health-plan marketplace, the types of available health-insurance plans, and opportunities for tax credits and cost-sharing.
In addition, the agencies will provide facilitated enrollment into plans available through the marketplace, which include Medicaid and Child Health Plus. They’ll also assist with plan renewals and appeals, according to HealtheConnections.
The HealtheConnections-navigator program is designed to reach individuals, sole proprietors and employers, and its target audience is uninsured and underinsured individuals, the organization said.
Nearly 40,000 individuals in Onondaga County, amounting to about 8 percent of the population of the county, are uninsured, according to HealtheConnections.
Of those, more than half (54 percent) are employed, the organization said.
HealtheConnections Health Planning is a service of HealtheConnections, a regional health-information organization which provides health-information exchange and electronic-health record adoption services to the medical community in Central New York, according to its website.
Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com