The New Orleans Charitable Health Fund (NOCHF) Initiative
The NOCHF was created on October 26, 2012, with $8,299,191 resulting from a court settlement to support access to primary medical care for Greater New Orleans (GNO) area residents. The Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee and community stakeholders determined that a focus on behavioral health integration (BHI) would support the region’s continuing transition to an accessible, high quality, coordinated, and sustainable healthcare delivery system. The NOCHF program focused on advancing systems-level change and care delivery models for BHI through:
- A competitive grant initiative for eligible GNO area community-based healthcare providers to implement innovative and evidence-based integrated models of primary healthcare, behavioral healthcare, and social services over a three-year period.
- A regional learning community designed to improve access, quality, coordination, and sustainability of integrated models of care for all GNO healthcare providers.
The competitive grant initiative concluded on December 31, 2015. The final programmatic report detailing full results can be downloaded here.
LPHI, through the generous support of Baptist Community Ministries, continues into its fourth year of a Regional Behavioral Health Integration Learning Community which meets quarterly around BHI trainings for FQHCs and CHCs throughout the greater New Orleans area, Louisiana and the Gulf Coast.
“I was in a pretty bad state- emotionally, physically, and mentally… But they pretty much saved me… I can’t stress enough what it has done for me as a whole.” - Patient of a NOCHF-Funded Community Health Center
“…the ease at which our primary care providers know and understand that behavioral health providers are available to assist with those complicated patients that they need help with, and it has essentially resulted in better outcomes for our patients.” –provider at Ruth Fertel Community Health Center