Consortium Initiatives
Currently managed by Safety Net Consortium of Middle Tennessee
My Healthcare Home
My HealthCare Home was developed after research showed that too many individuals and families did not know about our member clinics. Consortium members came together through a local process at HCA called Collaboration College to develop a tool to enable uninsured individuals to easily search and connect to accessible, affordable, quality health services on a regular basis in Nashville and across Middle Tennessee.
The searchable directory website was developed with funding from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as part of a grant to Vanderbilt University Medical Center as part of the Transforming Clinical Practices Initiative. It was translated into multiple languages with additional funding from the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County. The primary partners in the creation, development, and maintenance of the website have included: Faith Family Medical Center, Family and Children’s Service, Matthew Walker Comprehensive Health Center, Meharry-Vanderbilt Alliance, Mental Health America of the Mid South, Neighborhood Health, Saint Thomas Health, Tennessee Disability Coalition, and the Nashville Academy of Medicine.
Past initiatives and partnerships
Bridges to Care / Project Access Nashville
In 2001, the Consortium received a $1 million grant from HRSA, which was matched with $1 Million from Saint Thomas Health, to enroll and assist the uninsured population of Davidson County via a program called Bridges to Care (BTC). The program was housed at Metropolitan Nashville Public Health Department (MPHD) for uninsured residents of Davidson County, who were below 200% of Federal Poverty Level and ineligible for TennCare. Enrollment began at Emergency Departments (EDs) of area hospitals, participating clinics, Department of Human Services, and MPHD. Bridges to Care also opened pharmacy locations at Metro Nashville General Hospital and at Lentz Public Health Center. More than 41,000 Davidson County residents were enrolled in BTC in the first six years of the program, and 83,000 prescriptions were filled by May 2005. The program rebranded itself in 2013 as Project Access Nashville to align with the rebranding of Bridges to Care Plus below. The program continues today at Metro Nashville Public Health Department locations to refer uninsured residents of Davidson County to 35 safety net clinics in Davidson County who provide primary care, dental, mental health and substance abuse services.
Enrollment and operations of this program are separate from the specialty care operations and multi-county availability of Project Access Nashville Specialty Care mentioned below.
Bridges to Care Plus / Project Access Nashville Specialty Care
The Nashville Academy of Medicine (NAM) and the Safety Net Consortium launched Bridges to Care Plus (BTCP) in 2005 in partnership with area hospitals and MPHD. The program was modeled after the highly successful program called “Project Access” in Asheville, North Carolina, and a group of consortium members and physicians visited Asheville to learn about the success of this program. This program was launched in response to the lack of a coordinated system of care to connect patients to a specialist physician after they had visited a safety net clinic. NAM recruited over 700 physicians to participate in BTCP in the first five years of the program. Patients were seen at safety net clinics and then were referred to BTCP for donated medically necessary specialty care. Eligibility requirements at the inception of the program were for uninsured residents of Nashville/Davidson County, who were 200% or below of the Federal Poverty Level. In 2013, Bridges to Care Plus, rebranded as Project Access Nashville Specialty Care (PANSC) to align with the program it was modeled after in NC. Project Access Nashville Specialty Care began to expand to other counties in 2019, and is now under the direction of NAM’s foundation partner, the Medical Foundation of Nashville. PANSC utilizes a network of more than 2,100 physicians, and hospitals in 8 counties. PANSC serves uninsured residents of 36 counties with medically necessary specialty care and accepts referrals from more than 60 clinics throughout Middle Tennessee.
Enrollment and operations of this program are separate from the primary care operations of the Davidson County program Project Access Nashville mentioned above.
Nashville Safety Net Assessment
Published in 2010, this study was commissioned to evaluate the health care needs of the uninsured population of Nashville, and the capacity, demands, and future plans to address those needs. Research was performed by Tennessee State University Center for Health Research in collaboration with Meharry Medical College and Vanderbilt University.
Diabetes Improvement Project (DIP)
The Consortium board initiated the Diabetes Improvement Project (DIP) in 2009 with Alan Graber, MD, Siloam Health, and Clifton Meador MD, Meharry-Vanderbilt Alliance, to serve as co-directors of the project. Consortium member clinics at the time served 106,544 people; 7429 of whom were diabetic. This initiative focused on normalizing as near as possible the clinical outcomes of the patients with diabetes who were receiving care from the 21 Consortium member clinics. The DIP proposal was reviewed by the IRB’s of Vanderbilt, Meharry, and Saint Thomas. The project was classified as a quality improvement project with waiver of informed consent, and the committee met monthly for many years at the Meharry Vanderbilt Alliance to review data, hear from relevant speakers, and advance the goals of the project in serving the community.
Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative (TCPI)
CMS launched the Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative (TCPI) model in 2015 to support clinician practices through nationwide, collaborative, and peer-based learning networks.
To drive participation in this initiative, Safety Net Consortium of Middle Tennessee, Vanderbilt Health Affiliated Network and Vanderbilt University Medical Center built The Mid-South Practice Transformation Network (MPTN) to engage clinicians across Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas in the process of transformation with the overall goal of providing patients with higher quality care and better clinical outcomes at lower cost through the TCPI.