Safety Net Health Care

Catalog description

This course is designed to provide students with knowledge about what safety net health care is, how it is delivered and financed, and current policy and practice initiatives related to safety net care. A safety net can generally be described as a program that transfers benefits to those who are impoverished. The course will describe how poverty is defined in the United States and other countries. Safety net benefits could be in the form of cash, vouchers, or services. Transferring benefits to the impoverished can help to limit or prevent future economic shock or vulnerability for them. In health care, safety net is a generic term that is often used to describe services that are available to impoverished individuals, some of whom are insured and some are not. The safety net can also be described as a group of clinics, hospitals, and providers that have decided to provide services to impoverished patients. This decision may be based on altruism, but oftentimes an organization or provider must carefully consider the financial implications of providing this care. Given the challenges that public and private organizations face in providing safety net health care, novel approaches have been developed and students will have an opportunity to examine recent innovative approaches. After learning about the components of the safety net students will consider how these components work together within communities. In the last part of the course students will study marginalized groups that are often served in the safety net. Students will think about how they would manage these groups from a clinical, operational, and patient-centered perspective.