One Care of Southwest Virginia, Inc.

NEWS AND MEDIA RELEASES

“ONE CARE” APPLIES TECHNOLOGY TO DELIVERY OF HUMAN AND HEALTH SERVICES

Grant from the Community Foundation of the New River Valley to fund the information technology demonstration project.

BLACKSBURG, Va. (December 2004) — “One Care” of Southwest Virginia, Inc. will demonstrate a prototype web-based referral system intended to link citizens who need human and health services to the places they need to go for assistance. A $1000 grant from the Community Foundation of the New River Valley helps to fund the demonstrations to human, health and community leaders.

Founded in August 2003, “One Care” of Southwest Virginia, Inc. a non-profit organization supported by 41 public and private partners is promoting the implementation of a new system that will improve access to human and health services for the 154,000 citizens of Southwest Virginia who have no insurance or who are underinsured.

“A key goal of “One Care” is to better link through the use of technology human and health social agencies, both pubic and private, in the large, multi-county region of Virginia’s ninth congressional district,” said Tim Tobin, Chairman, Board of Directors for One Care.

The system is intended to provide ports of entry for citizens with unmet health and human services needs. This link will help to eliminate the need to fill out numerous applications that often represent a barrier to or delay in getting human and health services to the consumer. One Care focuses on the needs of citizens, not those of any one provider or program.

The intake, assessment, tracking, and referral system, COSMOS, developed by Virginia Tech’s Blacksburg Electronic Village in collaboration with the Washington County Department of Social Services and People, Inc. will be an important piece of the technological infrastructure needed to meet the needs of One Care’s stakeholders, partners, and the community at large.

The grant, awarded by the Community Foundation of the New River Valley, was made possible through a fund established by the Recognition Research Foundation. RRI is a provider of software used by the health insurance and Medicaid industry to reduce costs. “One Care is an innovative program that holds the potential for reducing health care costs to the under-insured,” says Anita Lilly, Business Manager of RRI. “The One Care program fits in very well with RRI’s mission of lowering the cost of healthcare to all.”

“The gift from the Community Foundation will help us to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new system to the non-profit and government agencies of southwest Virginia. This places us one step closer to putting the technology into action to help the people of our rural communities,” said Chairman Tobin.

The Community Foundation of the New River Valley is a publicly supported, tax-exempt, philanthropic organization created by and for the people of the New River Valley. The Foundation’s mission is to enhance the quality of life in the New River Valley by serving the charitable interests of donors and making creative, visionary and sensitive grants to worthy organizations and scholarships to individuals.

For More Information, Contact:

Tim Tobin, Chairman
276-596-6001

Stanley Stanczak, Treasurer
540-831-7726