Program areas at Project Access NOW
Many times, when low-income people are discharged from a hospital stay or emergency room visit, they face barriers that can stand in the way of their recovery. With the community assistance program, we support discharge planners, social workers, and care managers to connect low-income patients to the resources they need for a safe discharge. These resources may include transportation, temporary housing, and medication assistance. In the 2022 fiscal year, we served 12,900 individuals in need of transportation, food, medications, and housing for safe hospital discharge.
Project Access Now continues to work with safety net clinics, all of the area health systems, and most of the major specialty and multi-specialty clinics in the portland metro area to provide donated care to those who remain uninsured and who meet specific income requirements. The majority are immigrants, documented and undocumented, who are unable to receive health insurance coverage under the affordable care act or medicaid expansion. 3,000 individuals received donated health services through Project Access Now in our 2022 fiscal year.
Our premium assistance program helps those who earn too much to qualify for medicaid, but make too little to be able to afford marketplace insurance. Project Access Now pays the health insurance premiums for these individuals, and works with our hospital system partners to ensure that copays and deductibles are waived. We provided health insurance premium assistance to over 685 individuals in fiscal year 2022.
We conduct outreach and provide enrollment assistance for medicaid, qualified health plans, and other coverage programs available in our community. Enrolling in coverage is daunting for most people and is nearly impossible for those most in need. Further, we provide health literacy and navigation assistance to ensure people are able to utilize the coverage they have. Our outreach team reached more than 200,000 individuals in fy 2022.