Jonathan's Journal

If you haven't heard the term 'Health Home' yet, let me be the first to introduce it to you.

According the the Kaiser Family Foundation:

Health homes are designed to be person-centered systems of care that facilitate access to and coordination of the full array of primary and acute physical health services, behavioral health care, and long-term community-based services and supports. The health home model of service delivery builds additional linkages and enhances coordination and integration of medical and behavioral health care to better meet the needs of people with multiple chronic illnesses. The model aims to improve health care quality and clinical outcomes as well as the patient care experience, while also reducing per capita costs through more cost-effective care.

Health homes are strongly encouraged by the Affordable Care Act which enhances federal funds and are a strong trend in our field.

This trend is part of the reason we have developed lab services and began integrating primary medicine. Signature Health is now well positioned to take advantage of this growing trend in Behavioral Healthcare.

Ohio has a demonstration project for Mental Health Homes that may dramatically change how community mental health centers operate over the next few years.

I will continue to update you on this trend of our strategic position.

This past week we cleared one more hurdle for the Hotel Project. The City of Ashtabula approved the property tax abatement that the building owners applied for on our behalf. This will save us a substantial amount of money in our rent payments over the next 10 years and was crucial to getting this deal done. We are still waiting for the City to approve the Parking Lot plans although at this point there won't be any work on it until spring arrives.

Meanwhile, the engineers and the architect are still working on the detailed construction drawings of the building renovations, Elevator renovations, HVAC systems, Electrical systems, etc.

I am still guessing we are about 4-5 weeks away from beginning to see the demolition crews get started.

I will keep you posted.

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK.....