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When Access Health opened in 1999, our goal was to provide an affordable alternative to commercial health insurance for low-income workers who couldn’t otherwise access health coverage. Over the last 25 years, we have worked with more than than 2,000 local businesses and provided health coverage for more than 60,000 workers — at a fraction of the cost of traditional insurance.
One of our early challenges was finding ways to keep costs low while actively engaging members to be more proactive about improving their health.
Our unique multi-share model relies on a financing arrangement that combines resources from community stakeholders with a vested interest in community health – including care providers, hospitals, and businesses. This means that members only pay 30% of the premiums.
One of the ways we keep costs low for the stakeholders is to requiring members to participate in health-related activities that promote accountability and improve health outcomes.
Instead of focusing on just physical health, our innovative “Whole Person” approach takes into account the many factors that contribute to health, some of which include financial, social, emotional, and intellectual wellbeing.
Over the past 25 years, Access Health has been featured in a number of national and local publications, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the American Medical Association’s American Medical News, and Business Week magazine.
In more recent years, Access Health has looked to impacting the whole community by promoting community health and wellbeing through grassroot initiatives:
With a significant grant from W.K. Kellogg Foundation and an agreement with the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH), Access Health was founded in Muskegon, Michigan.
Access Health served as the national model for several other multi-share plans funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services’ State Health Access Program (SHAP) grants. 14 programs in four states received funding to replicate the multi-share model. The communities where the program was replicated are as diverse as Houston Texas, Bend Oregon, Pueblo Colorado, and Duluth Minnesota.
Our coverage plan began a corporate wellness program, which integrated what we now call Continuous Health Improvement (CHI) into the companies’ operations aimed at promoting long-term health of their employees and their dependents to help control health care benefits costs. We successfully administered this program for several years and over a dozen businesses that range from manufacturing to public health sectors.
Access Health helped launch the first Livability Lab. This annual event brings together business leaders, educators, health and human services organizations, government officials, and residents toto address barriers that can impede good health and prosperity for all residents of Muskegon County. The result was a community-led 100 Day Challenge, where smaller teams worked to enact the changes discussed at the event.rovided a forum for people to work together to address challenges facing their community.
The State of Michigan completed an actuarial and economic analysis study of the health plan and found that the health plan could save taxpayers $7.8 million over 5 years, reduce the number of uninsured County residents by 6.8% and with our NO Deductible, comprehensive health benefits would qualify as a “Platinum” level plan on the ACA Marketplace plans.
Access Health Inc. is a 501 (C3) non-profit healthcare organization in Muskegon, MI that was incorporated in 1999. Access Health provides affordable, quality health care and support for community health initiatives and programs allowing individuals and the Muskegon community to thrive. For 25 years, it has been empowering people and changing lives through an initial tri-share health benefit funded by the employer, employee and the community. It also addresses the psycho-social determinants of health for individuals and the overall community.
Access Health gave an ever changing and consolidating health care system in Muskegon a vehicle in which to cooperate for the benefit of the community, according to longtime hospital administrator Roger Spoelman.
In a short period of time, Katie has become a fierce advocate for the Access Health mission and programs.
Cheryl Schneider has been many things to Access Health over its 25 years, but few have been such a strong evangelist for an agency that has brought affordable healthcare to the uninsured in Muskegon and so much more.
Linda Bailey calls her work leading Access Health as its second board president the proudest of her nursing and healthcare administration career.
The fact that Dr. Byron Varnado is the medical director of Access Health is apropos in that the family physician was born and raised in Muskegon and now serves the 25-year-old community agency.
Dr. Rem Sprague came to Muskegon in 1981 as an internal medicine physician working through 1996 with a hospital physician’s network until he became chief medical officer of what was then Mercy Hospital.
Access Health Board President Don Shampine came to the agency’s leadership with a health insurance industry background. He has grown to appreciate the way Access Health is “disruptive of the status quo.”
As its only executive director for the 25 years of Access Health, Jeff Fortenbacher has provided the community-based healthcare agency’s vision, inspiration and has been the driving force of a successful team the past quarter century.
If Access Health Executive Director Jeff Fortenbacher raised the agency for its first 25 years, Vondie Woodbury definitely birthed that child beginning in 1995 with a W.K. Kellogg Foundation grant to the Community Foundation for Muskegon County.