Safety-Net Agencies Protect Vulnerable Populations

A researcher from the University of Missouri, Nidhi Khosla, and her team, studied the impact of closure of a large, safety-net agency on it's clients and on smaller agencies to which the clients were referred.

In their study, the team evaluated the influence of closing down a large safety-net agency on smaller HIV service organizations and found that patients were lost or disconnected from services, received delayed care, and lost access to an organization that could refer them to multiple services. The service agenice, in turn, faced some disorder due to lack of adequate case management.

The authors recommend that agencies should have plans in place to face such eventualities so clients do not face the impact of such sudden closures. They also urge healthcare policymakers to implement changes to agencies incrementally and in a planned manner to ensure individuals are not lost in the system. Long-term planning and adapting goals to suit client needs, said Khosla in a statement, can ensure sustainibility of such safety-net agencies.

The study was recently published in World Medical & Health Policy.

Read the complete press release at EurekAlert!