Author Archives: Admin

Medicaid Redeterminations

CCHCC is here to help

August 8, 2023

Do you have Medicaid, or do you know someone who has Medicaid? If so, understanding the process for Medicaid Redeterminations is crucial, in order to maintain one’s Medicaid coverage.
 
Illinois Medicaid has started to renew benefits for the first time in 3 years, since the pandemic began!
In order to ensure ongoing coverage, Medicaid beneficiaries will have to do the following:

    •    Update your address!
    ◦    Online: https://ilhfspartner3.dynamics365portals.us/addressupdate/
    ◦    Phone: 877-805-5312
    •    Check your mail!
    •    Complete the application and return it!

People who only receive Social Security benefits will be automatically renewed and sent a notice of their renewal, but others will have to complete a household specific form to renew benefits over the course of the year.

Here is how CCHCC can help:
CCHCC can help Medicaid beneficiaries in several different ways. We can help clients:
    •    Complete paper applications;
    •    Create abe.illinois.gov accounts to complete renewals online;
    •    Update addresses online (having a current address is crucial!);
    •    Find their renewal dates; and,
    •    Submit by fax or online additional documentation as requested by DHS.

READ ON!

CCHCC’s Disability Application Services Program is up and running!

Please support CCHCC!

June 2023

Champaign County Health Care Consumers (CCHCC) is excited to let you know that our newly-created Disability Application Services Program is up and running!

CCHCC has had a vision for this program for many years because we know how difficult it is for individuals to work through the disability application process on their own. Applying for disability through the Social Security Administration is a truly brutal and baffling process, and all too often, people who need disability benefits tend to “give up” and are unable to get through the application process on their own. Research shows that people who have ”advocates” helping them with disability applications are far more likely to be approved for benefits.

CCHCC’s new staff members are already helping many community members apply for disability benefits! CCHCC is pleased to announce that Vivian Adams and Shea Belahi are our amazing Disability Application Specialists. Vivian also serves as the Coordinator of our Disability Application Services Program. Both Vivian and Shea are kind, compassionate, and highly skilled. We are so excited to have them on staff at CCHCC and joining Paulette Colemon and myself on the Disability Team. In July, we will also welcome Babatunde Amao to CCHCC as another Disability Application Specialist.

People who have disabling conditions that limit their ability to work and carry out activities of daily living, are also often suffering from poverty and struggling to make ends meet. CCHCC is uniquely situated to help individuals in this position because, not only can we help them apply for disability benefits, we can also help them apply for other benefits such as SNAP (food stamps), health insurance, energy assistance, free phones, and more.

What is “disability”, as a benefit? “Disability” as a benefit refers to the income supports programs that provide beneficiaries with monthly income, made available by State and Federal governments:

READ ON!

Important resources for low-income Medicare beneficiaries.

CCHCC can help!

May 9, 2023

If you are – or if you know of – a low-income Medicare beneficiary, there are important programs that help reduce out-of-pocket expenses to help make Medicare, prescriptions, and food more affordable. And CCHCC can help our community members enroll in those programs!

There are helpful programs that too many people do not know about, and are going underutilized by the people who need them the most.

These programs included Medicare Savings, Medicare Extra Help, and SNAP (food stamps).

Please read below to learn more about these programs, and how to get help with these programs for yourself, or someone you know.

READ ON!

Take Action TODAY! The Rothner’s are requesting to sell off the nursing home AGAIN!

March 14, 2023

Tonight, the Champaign County Board will meet as the Committee of the Whole, and, as part of the meeting, will consider another request from the Rothners to be allowed to sell the former Champaign County Nursing Home to an entity that would use the space to create a drug and alcohol treatment center.
 
The Rothners are asking the County Board, once again, to let them out of the covenant where they promised to continue to operate the nursing home for at least 10 years. The Rothners have only operated the former County Nursing Home, now called University Rehabilitation Services of C-U, for less than four years.

CCHCC isurging community members to contact their County Board Members, or the County Board as a whole, to oppose the Rothner’s request to sell the nursing home. And/or, people can speak during public participation at tonight’s County Board Committee of the Whole Meeting, which starts at 6:30 p.m. The Agenda Packet for tonight’s meeting is posted here.

There has been some coverage about this in the news, which you can see here.

The Rothners are claiming that no harm would come to the community as a result of selling the former County Nursing Home and converting it to another type of treatment facility. But this is false. Right now, many community members who need nursing home or rehab care are being sent to facilities away from our community, where it is hard for their families and friends to visit them regularly. If this nursing home goes away, our community will have lost a total of three nursing homes, thanks to the Rothners.

The Rothners should NOT be allowed to sell the nursing home, and they MUST be made to abide by the covenant they signed when they were given permission to buy the former County Nursing Home.

READ ON FOR Q&A!

We are expanding services for special populations – please support CCHCC!

March 2023

Champaign County Health Care Consumers (CCHCC) is undertaking an enormous effort to serve even more people in our community – specifically focusing on “special populations” that are low-income and underserved in our community, and who are suffering the ravages and strain of living in persistent poverty.

CCHCC is building new programs to significantly increase services to these special populations and bring greater health and economic stability to their lives: low-income seniors, low-income people with disabilities, homeless and near-homeless individuals, and pregnant and parenting women incarcerated in the County Jail. Please read on to learn more about our exciting new initiatives, and what you can do to help support these efforts.

Hope Village – a tiny homes village for chronically and medically fragile homeless individuals: After many experiences working with medically-fragile homeless individuals in 2021 to help them get housed, CCHCC developed the idea of creating a tiny homes village with intensive case management services for chronically homeless individuals in our community. We saw first-hand how our county’s current system of housing that is available for homeless individuals does not work well for a subset of homeless people: the chronically homeless and medically-fragile homeless individuals. These are individuals who have many challenges, traumas, and health problems, who are not able to be easily housed and maintained in permanent housing.

CCHCC is excited to be collaborating with Carle and UIUC to create “Hope Village” – a tiny homes village to house this extremely vulnerable population. We believe that “housing is health”. Stay tuned for more information on this exciting new project!

READ ON!