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sherie.arriazola - (12/23/2013 11:43:51 AM)
Jail-intake Enrollment in Cook County, IL
CountyCare (Cook County's early expansion of Medicaid) and the Cook County Sheriff's Office have been working together to get the justice population enrolled into Medicaid. TASC utilized its existing expertise and experience providing screening, assessment, linkage and case management services to people on pre-trial and probation, to perform enrollment inside the jail. Enrollment is done as a part of the intake process. Enrollment services are funded through a contract with CountyCare's call center vendor - "Automated Health Systems," to which TASC is a subcontractor. There were several systematic changes that needed to happen in order to make jail-enrollment work , e.g. 1) space set up for enrollers to work, 2) the use of fingerprint-based identification as a a replacement of a state ID, and 3) the creation of a verification of incarceration (VOI) form used by Sheriffs and enrollers to determine whether or not a detainee has been released. These changes were developed by the Cook County Health and Hospitals System (overseer of CountyCare), the Cook County Sheriff's Office, TASC, and HFS (the state's Medicaid Authority), through a collaborative planning process called the Cook County Justice and Health Initiative (JHI). JHI is convened by the presiding judge of the Cook County Criminal Court - Judge Paul Biebel. It is facilitated by TASC and supported by grant funds from the Chicago Community Trust. Please note that CountyCare applications are initiated by enrollers during intake. Applications are officially submitted to HFS for approval upon notification from the Sheriffs that a detainee has been released via the VOI form. Enrollment is not mandatory, but optional to detainees. Enrollment has been expanded to other parts of the jail to capture detainees who bypass the intake process, e.g. at the Cermak Hospital inside the jail (Illinois' largest mental health provider). 10,000 applications have been initiated inside the jail as of November 30, 2013. Applications initiated inside the jail see a 91% approval rate, compared to the 85% approval rate experienced with applications initiated in the community. It is also important to note that persons released from prison will most likely qualify for Medicaid and not the marketplace, since they will have little to no income coming out. If the state that a person is returning to has not opted to expand Medicaid, a person would have to start working to produce the required amount of income to qualify for preimum assistance on the marketplace.