About Us
The Caring Program: Care Coordination for Children with Special Health Care Needs
The Caring Program assists children with chronic conditions and/or special health care needs and their families to gain needed services by providing family-centered, community-based care coordination. This process links these children and families to services and resources in a coordinated way to maximize the children's health and quality of life.
The Caring Program is available free of charge to children with special health care needs who are enrolled in Pennsylvania's Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) through Highmark Inc. CHIP benefits and eligibility are not affected by participation in the Caring Program. This program is available in the 49 counties served by Highmark.
The Caring Program is a response to the needs and concerns identified by children with special health care needs, their families, physicians and the community.
With this support, children with special health care needs are better positioned to obtain optimal health, reach their personal goals, and maximize their potential.
Origin
The Caring Program: Care Coordination for Children with Special Health Care Needs was originally a program of the Highmark Caring Foundation, a charitable organization committed to caring for children in need in Western and Central Pennsylvania.
Through the Highmark Caring Foundation, the Caring Program staff worked to build partnerships that made a difference for those in need, especially for children.
Current Status
As a result of the successful efforts of the Caring Program and the positive outcomes evaluation conducted in 2007 by the University of Pittsburgh, Graduate School of Public Health, the Caring Program was integrated into Highmark's Healthcare Management Service Department. The integration from the Caring Foundation into Highmark's corporate division will potentially enable the Program to expand in the future to help meet the needs of more children enrolled in Highmark's health insurance products.
The Caring Program currently provides the following services for children enrolled in CHIP through Highmark:
- Care Coordination services
- Case Management services
- Disease Management services for the following conditions:
- Asthma
- Diabetes
- Obesity
- Tobacco use, prevention and cessation