Health Assistance Partnership, Washington DC

The Health Assistance Partnership (HAP) is a project of the national organization, Families USA.  HAP develops tools and services to help the State Health Insurance Assistance Programs (SHIPs) to assist Medicare beneficiaries and their caregivers manage the increasingly complex Medicare system.  Such assistance empowers Medicare beneficiaries to make informed health care decisions and effectively access the health care benefits to which they are entitled.

IANet assisted HAP complete a large demonstration project with six states on how to enhance the capacity of the SHIP network. IANet’s part of the project began with a planning exercise:  a strategic information technology assessment of the six states and a series of recommendations on how HAP could provide information technology-based services to these six states.  HAP and IANet collaborated with the states to create six mini-pilot projects to demonstrate the effectiveness of using information technology to address challenges facing the SHIP Network, including data collection and analysis; long-distance, interactive training; remote connectivity options; online resource development; knowledge management tools, and local technology planning techniques.

HAP and IANet collaborated with its partner states to raise additional funds to expand the mini-pilots.  An expansion of the mini-pilot project in Ohio (the data collection and analysis service) and a new project in Iowa (online recertification) were funded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  The Ohio service streamlined the process of collecting and reporting the key measurement indicators of the SHIP Network: client contacts, presentations and media events and volunteer services.  While the end-result of this project was better data collection, the key ingredient in its rapid adoption and use by the end-users was its intuitive interface, which end-users found easy to incorporate into their daily routine.  This product provided real-time analysis of the clients that were being served enabling the local as well as state-wide coordinators to better manage their operations.  At the annual SHIP conference, this project was heralded as powerful and practical innovation.

IANet also collaborated with HAP to develop a business case for ongoing funding. We developed strategies that would demonstrate how HAP could become largely self-sustainable using a fee-for-service model of the information technology tools created and other services that HAP provides the SHIP Network.  This process was successful; HAP received multiple millions of dollars to expand their operations and deliver their services to a larger segment of the SHIP Network.