Model of care
“Our health system is broken, and Project Access is a small but significant community effort to deal with the health care crisis. It’s the right thing to do. Everyone deserves basic health care and Project Access is one of the ways that we can all can work together to help make sure [everyone gets basic health care] in our community.“”
—Louis Libby, MD
Project Access is an efficient, coordinated system helping to increase access to health care for the low-income uninsured. It’s a convenient, simple vehicle that helps physicians manage the challenges of caring for the most vulnerable in our communities. It allows volunteer physicians and other health care providers to donate care to the uninsured in a way that is organized, equitable and safe. Project Access will quantify and coordinate the donated care physicians may already be providing. Project Access takes care of all the details to allow physicians the freedom to focus on healing.
Patients in the local Project Access initiatives will have access to medications, hospitalizations, lab testing, diagnostic imaging and other ancillary services. The Project Access system allows physicians to order tests, schedule hospitalizations, and care for uninsured patients in a manner very similar to the process for caring for insured patients, without extraordinary measures.
Origins of Project Access
“Project Access started in Asheville, Buncombe County, North Carolina in 1996. The physicians of the Buncombe County Medical Society realized the need for access to the full continuum of care for all low-income, uninsured residents of the community. Using the public commitment of our physicians to treat every low-income, uninsured resident was a leveraging tool to obtain commitments from others in the community.
Project Access is a system that provides healthcare to low-income individuals who do not have insurance, nor do they qualify for public assistance. Project Access patients see physicians for free (both primary care doctors and specialists) and get all other healthcare services they need at no cost (hospital inpatient and outpatient services, lab work, x-rays, rehabilitation, medications, etc.).
Simply put, Project Access is based on physicians volunteering their time to see patients for free, and other community partners, such as hospitals, donating the other medical services the patients need.
(Information courtesy of Physicians’ Innovation Network.)
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Project Access around the U.S.
Anchorage, Alaska
Waterbury, Connecticut
Naples, Florida
Palm Beach, Florida
Augusta, Georgia
Gainesville, Georgia
Chicago, Illinois
Wheaton, Illinois
Indianapolis, Indiana
Wichita, Kansas
Portland, Maine
3 upper peninsula counties, Michigan
