Healthcare Innovation is holding its two-day 2022 Southern California Healthcare Innovation Summit in La Jolla next week, and John Baackes, the CEO of L.A. Care Health Plan, will be the featured speaker in a Fireside Chat that kicks off the event. This is the 14th year that the publication has hosted the regional event series offering healthcare executives a forum to discuss the latest trends, challenges, strategies and opportunities. Baackes will discuss the wide variety of ways that L.A. Care is making health care more equitable for its members and their communities.
Baackes will discuss various initiatives L.A. Care has launched to support the Los Angeles County safety net, which provides access to care regardless of a patient’s ability to pay and whose patient population includes a substantial share of uninsured, Medi-Cal beneficiaries, and other vulnerable people. Among those initiatives is Elevating the Safety Net (ESN). Baackes will describe how some of the ESN programs are helping to boost the number of new physicians in the county’s safety net system. He will also talk about another ESN program – the IHHS+ Home Care Training Program, a 10-week program that educates and empowers in-home caregivers who provide care to seniors and persons with disabilities. This program was recently recognized by Healthcare Innovation as a semifinalist in its Innovator Awards.
Healthcare Innovation is interested in learning about the challenges of serving the diverse communities in Los Angeles County. Baackes will describe the health inequities that were put under a spotlight during the COVID-19 pandemic, which disproportionately impacted Black and Latino communities. He will describe how L.A. Care has launched a number of projects to increase COVID-19 vaccinations in these communities and how it hosted and supported a number of food pantries to address food insecurity that increased during the pandemic.
The Southern California Healthcare Innovation Summit is being held on May 2 and 3. The session with John Baackes will be Monday, May 2, 9:00-9:30 am.