Policy & Practice | Summer 2024

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Often, health care focuses on the body. You cut your finger, you get a bandage. Whole-person care is different because it also takes social determinants into account.

Whole-Person Care Often, health care focuses on the body. You cut your finger, you get a bandage. To prevent illness, you get a vaccine. Whole-person care is dif ferent because it also takes social determinants into account. When I served as Deputy Division Director in the Department for Social Services for MO Health Net in Missouri, whole-person care was already well established. Our director strove for the inclusion of behavioral and physical health care into our Medicaid contracts with our managed care organizations, which delivered a better, more streamlined care experience and reduced costs. Most important, this approach enabled our Medicaid members to respond to their issues and needs—on their own. The Launch of HOP My experience in Missouri proved we could apply our efforts to address social needs for Medicaid recipients in North Carolina. Dr. Mandy K. Cohen, then North Carolina’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, and now the Director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was all in on whole-person care. She sup ported us fully on integrating social determinants into HOP, which we launched in 2022. HOP is the first program of its kind to test and evaluate the impact of providing select evidence-based,

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Carolina through October 2024. HOP is part of North Carolina’s 1115 waiver, where the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services has approved the use of Medicaid dollars to deliver social services.

nonmedical interventions to Medicaid members with high needs. The federal government autho rized up to $650 million in federal and state Medicaid funding for HOP to operate in three regions of North

HOP pulled together the right resources to provide the support needed at both the community and human services level. At its core, HOP is a new delivery system for whole-person care that legitimizes addressing social determinants by bringing them under the umbrella of Medicaid. n 288,000 services delivered n Significant reduction in ER visits n $85 reduction in medical costs per member, per month hop by the numbers

Jay Ludlam is the Deputy Secretary for North Carolina Medicaid at the state’s Department of Health and Human Services.

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Policy & Practice Summer 2024