By Chris Miller, Assistant Editor, Facility Market

An Ohio Children’s Hospital created a new company to coordinate care for 100,000 Medicaid Patients in a 13-county region, according to the Akron Beacon Journal. Akron Children's Hospital’s new company is called the Akron Children’s Health Collaborative and will officially be its first accountable care organization.

The health system has been collaborating with a network of independent physicians and federally qualified health centers to set up the collaborative. There are still an additional 120,000 Medicaid-covered children in the 13 counties with different insurers that are not yet covered under this new model.

The company’s first contract is with CareSource, the largest insurer of Medicaid-covered children in Ohio. This specific contract will begin October 1. Akron Children’s will get a set amount of money per CareSource enrollee per month. It will use this money to help Medicaid children get better care at the front end. The health system is also in talks with other Medicaid providers for children in its 35-county coverage area to help produce similar collaborations.

About 42 percent of the total 100,000 children a part of the new care model are presently Akron Children’s patients. Children’s has been aiding with other social barriers to health care, such as transportation needs, food insecurity and housing needs The remaining 58 percent of children covered under the new model have primary care physicians who are not associated with Children’s.