The Monroe Plan for Medical Care is a managed care organization, located in the Rochester, New York area. The Monroe Plan covers 5,633 children with asthma in Monroe County and 12 neighboring rural counties. With a high asthma burden among children in the area, the Monroe Plan saw trends in pediatric asthma and noticed high admission rates that disproportionately affected minorities. Monroe Plan partnered with ViaHealth, a health care delivery system, to launch a program to shift asthma care toward improved patient self-management. The program now covers all of the plan’s members with moderate to severe pediatric asthma and includes assistance to providers in creating asthma action plans and comprehensive provider and member education. Home assessments are conducted by bilingual asthma outreach workers to identify and reduce environmental triggers. As a result of these interventions, ER visits decreased from 1.1 visits per person to .95 visits per person over the first three years of the program. Inpatient admissions decreased from 98.3 admissions per thousand to 84.15 per thousand in the first three years of the program.
Elizabeth Cotsworth, then Director, Office of Radiation and Indoor Air, U.S. EPA, and Beth Craig, then Deputy Assistant Administrator, Office of Air and Radiation, EPA, and Chris Draft, then NFL player, present Award to (from left to right) Dr. Joe Stankaitis and Deborah Peartree of the Monroe Plan for Medical Care