St. Charles Health System and Healthmatters of Central Oregon recently decided to transfer ownership and operation of the SharedCare health improvement plan to St. Charles.
SharedCare, which launched in 2010, is a grant-funded program that gives small business owners in Crook, Deschutes and Jefferson counties the opportunity to provide affordable health care benefits to their uninsured employees. The SharedCare plan fills the gap between public health assistance programs and traditional insurance in order to ensure access to affordable health coverage.
“We were two years into a five-year federal grant when the grant was cut,” said Alisha Fehrenbacher, CEO of Healthmatters. “Without that grant funding, it was simply not possible for Healthmatters to sustain the SharedCare plan on its own.”
About 400 people are currently enrolled in SharedCare and more than 100 are on the waiting list. Fehrenbacher said Healthmatters stopped enrolling new members in November when she began looking for a way to keep SharedCare going. Enrollment will begin again now that St. Charles has stepped in to help.
“It is simply the right thing to do for the SharedCare members and our community,” said Jim Diegel, president and CEO of St. Charles Health System. “Providing people with health care coverage who couldn’t afford it otherwise, is a core example of how St. Charles is working to create better health and provide better care at lower costs. We think bringing SharedCare into the St. Charles family is a great opportunity to expand on our preventative health and wellness efforts.”
SharedCare is intended to provide access to health care for the uninsured working residents of the tri-county region who do not have access to, and cannot afford, traditional insurance and who are not eligible for any public insurance or health care programs such as Medicaid or Medicare. The multi-share model was first made possible by the passage of Oregon Senate Bill 862 in 2009 and has received support and oversight from the Oregon Office of Health Policy and Research. In this model, the costs of the plan are kept low because they are split between the employer, the employee and the community.
“Without St. Charles, SharedCare would have gone away,” Fehrenbacher said. “I am hopeful that through this affiliation the program will be able to grow.”
About St. Charles Health Systems
St. Charles Health System, Inc., headquartered in Bend, Ore., owns and operates the St. Charles medical centers in Bend and Redmond, leases and operates Pioneer Memorial Hospital in Prineville and provides management services for Mountain View Hospital in Madras. St. Charles is a private, not-for-profit Oregon corporation and is the largest employer in Central Oregon with more than 3,000 caregivers in Bend, Redmond and Prineville. In addition, there are more than 350 active medical staff members and nearly 200 visiting medical staff members who partner with St. Charles to provide a wide range of care and service to our communities.
