UPHP Named 2017 Pinnacle Award Winner
Posted on September 30, 2017
MARQUETTE- The Upper Peninsula Health Plan (UPHP) was recently awarded the 2017 Pinnacle Award for the Community Outreach Collaborative category. UPHP staff were present to accept the award at the Michigan Association of Health Plans Foundation Annual Pinnacle Awards event held on September 19th in Lansing.
Connected Communities for Health (CC4H) was the initiative featured in UPHP’s winning application. CC4H aims to address UPHP members’ social determinants of health in collaboration with community, state, faith-based and other non-traditional health care network partners to fulfill their resource needs. Since program implementation in June 2016, UPHP has screened 426 members for social needs and 36 percent of those members indicated existing needs with 81 percent accepting enrollment into the CC4H program.
UPHP’s submission was one of 34 ground-breaking programs submitted by health plans from across the state, all of which are leading the health care industry with innovative programs to improve patient health care, lower costs, and increase services to Michigan citizens. Full details on each winner are available at www.mahp.org.
Health plans submit new programs to a judging panel comprised of health care experts, lawmakers, and news media. The panel reviews submissions in depth before choosing winners in various categories for commercial health insurers and Medicaid health plans. Other winners were Physicians Health Plan, McLaren Health Plan, and Harbor Health.
“I am proud of our team’s implementation of this essential program for our members. It is truly a collaborative effort in our community to identify unmet needs and connect members to resources for food, housing, and transportation among other things,” said Dennis Smith, President and CEO of Upper Peninsula Health Plan. “It’s special to see a program like this be widely accepted and integrated into our community.”
MAHP shares the winning programs among members, helping them adopt best practices throughout the state’s health plans. UPHP is proud to be featured among the winners of the 2017 Pinnacle awards addressing issues from empowering staff to improve processes, to improving health care outcomes for pregnant mothers, to initiatives that address social determinants of health.
About UPHP
Upper Peninsula Health Plan currently serves over 47,000 members across five product lines (Michigan Medicaid, Children with Special Health Care Services, Healthy Michigan Plan, MI Health Link, and Medicare Advantage) and its network exceeds 1,500 providers. Learn more at www.uphp.com.