ActionAIDS expands to DelCo

Two HIV/AIDS service organizations in the region will collaborate to enhance case-management services for people living in Delaware County. Philadelphia’s ActionAIDS announced Sept. 25 it will begin providing day-to-day medical case management for clients of Delaware County’s AIDS Care Group. The effort will be supported by about $325,000 from the AIDS Activities Coordinating Office and from ActionAIDS’ unrestricted funds. ActionAIDS executive director Kevin Burns said the collaboration will bring on an additional 400 case-management clients a month for ActionAIDS and will relieve AIDS Care Group to focus on providing medical care to the approximately 300 patients it sees per month, along with the 150 patients who seek dental care each month. AIDS Care Group currently has 70 staffers. ActionAIDS employed 64 case managers in 2012, who served 2,460 clients. AIDS Care Group director of integrative medicine Kevin Moore said his organization was encouraged to pursue the collaboration because of ActionAIDS’ record of success in case management. “We had done case management for clients for a number of years and never felt like our services there had that integral quality, and we had seen ActionAIDS be successful with so many clients on a large scale,” he said. Burns said the organization will now have five newly hired case managers and one supervisor at the AIDS Care Group site in Chester and will also rent office space next to the clinic. More than 2,000 people are living with HIV/AIDS in Delaware County, more than in Bucks, Montgomery and Chester. Moore said the collaboration could be especially important for the uninsured, who comprise about half of AIDS Care Group’s clients. He noted ActionAIDS has a proven “track record” for connecting clients with insurance. Burns said the collaboration will fuse both organizations’ strengths to create more cohesive services to their clients. “There is a lot of synergy around how we approach our work at ActionAIDS and how AIDS Care Group works,” he said. “I felt their strength was providing high-quality dental and medical care. They thought our strength was medical case management. Their model is similar to our model in terms of trying to be holistic.” In January, Burns said, ActionAIDS will begin subcontracting at AIDS Care Group’s small clinic in West Philadelphia to help clients struggling to stay connected with traditional primary care. For more information on ActionAIDS, visit www.actionaids.org. For more information on AIDS Care Group, visit http://aidscaregroup.org.

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