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Health Advantage History
The Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County (HHC) is one of the long-standing and key providers
of health care to low-income and uninsured residents in Marion County. Funded with local property tax dollars, HHC operates
the
Marion County Health Department,
Wishard Hospital
and
Wishard Community Health Centers. In this way,
HHC offers the indigent residents of Marion County a wide range of health care services from primary to preventive care.
Despite the provision of these services, HHC was concerned about how, when and where patients were receiving
their care. Many individuals were unable to afford traditional health care coverage, and therefore either visited their physician
only when very ill or directly used the emergency room as a physician's office for minor illnesses. The care these patients
received was episodic--often delayed--late in the disease stage and/or not in the most appropriate setting. With no
regular source of care, services were fragmented and duplicated. Patients did not consistently receive the primary and preventative
care services critical to health promotion and disease prevention.
To address these issues, Health and Hospital Corporation launched an innovative program designed to provide high quality,
seamless health care to the low-income and uninsured residents of Marion County--the Health Advantage program (initially titled
Wishard Advantage). Established in 1997, Health Advantage is a managed-care program for the indigent, modeled after the
Indiana Medicaid program.
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