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Accessibility of Services

Community Care ensures that members get behavioral health appointments in a timely manner and that they have quick access to Community Care by telephone. We measure how quickly we answer the telephone and the percentage of callers who hang up before their call is answered. For all four quarters of 2005, Community Care met or exceeded our goals for both of these measures in all of our counties. However, we continually strive to improve our telephone responsiveness.

Community Care has adopted appointment access standards that meet or exceed state and national guidelines. Community Care members are entitled to:

• Appointments for routine behavioral health services within seven calendar days
• Services for urgent needs within 24 hours
• Non-life threatening emergency services within one hour
• Immediate emergency services in life threatening situations
  
• In 2005, Community Care providers met the appointment standard for urgent and emergency services 100% of the time in each of our counties.

Access to routine behavioral health appointments is measured by two questions on the annual member satisfaction survey. The results from the 2005 survey are as follows.

• For the first question, “Not counting the times you needed counseling or treatment right away, how often did you get an appointment as soon as you wanted?” the results show a range of 74.2% - 81.1% across our counties that members reported that they usually or always got an appointment as soon as they wanted.
• The results of the second question, “Not counting the times you needed counseling or treatment right away, how long did you usually have to wait between making an appointment and actually seeing someone?” show a range of 59.1% - 69.7% across our counties that members reported that they were seen within seven calendar days.

Completed and ongoing interventions to increase these rates include:

• Community Care care management staff are always available to assist members in scheduling appointments, including three way calls with the member and provider.
• Members are notified, via the member newsletter, about what our access standards are on at least an annual basis.
• The access standards are also published periodically in the provider newsletter.
• Community Care tracks times when providers do not offer timely appointments.

Community Care thanks our providers for their attention to these matters and looks forward to continued collaboration to ensure our members are offered timely appointments.

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