Healthy Start Performance Improvement Project 

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Project Goals

Five health plans – Blue Plus, Health Partners, Hennepin Health, South Country Health Alliance, and UCare – launched the Healthy Start performance improvement project in the spring of 2021.
The project focuses on ensuring a “healthy start” for Minnesota children by concentrating on improving services provided to pregnant women and infants, with a particular focus on reducing racial and ethnic disparities. Interventions will include working with a wide variety of partners to improve access and coordination of resources to help mothers and children get the right care at the right time in the right setting.

Project Description

The project is focused on closing healthcare disparities. Each health plan monitors at least one of the metrics below, and many of the plans are actively trying to impact all of them.

  • Timely prenatal and postpartum care
  • Well Child Visits in the First 30 Months of Life
  • Childhood Immunization Status
  • Low Birth Weight

The project will monitor rates at the population level and disaggregate rates by race and ethnicity when available, in partnership with the Department of Human Services (DHS), who supplies the race and ethnicity of members. The project goal is to close the disparity gap in the selected measures (comparing baseline 2019 dates of service to 2023 dates of service, which will mark the end of the active project). We anticipate that these efforts will continue beyond the end of the official project at each individual health plan.

Entities Involved

Blue Plus, Health Partners, Hennepin Health, Medica, South Country Health Alliance, and UCare

How Health Plans Support the Project

The nonprofit Minnesota health plans serving Minnesota Health Care Program members are leading this work. This collaboration enables us to bring resources and education to the provider community, which increases buy-in by diminishing duplicative messaging to providers.

Additional Information

Visit the Collaboratives website at https://stratishealth.org/health-plan-performance-improvement-projects-pips/pip-healthy-start-for-minnesota-children/ for more detailed information.