Beacon Health Options is creating “peer support” roles in its Medicaid contracts, which include parents with children in the Medicaid program, to help members navigate their experience with Medicaid behavioral health care. Gary Seguin, Clinical Quality Director at Beacon, explained that parent advocates embedded into the Medicaid managed care contracts the company helped implement in North Texas have played a critical role in supporting beneficiaries.
“When that happened—they were going off of traditional Medicaid and were gonna be managed by a traditional managed care company—there was a lot of anxiety around that change, and the parent advocate was able to allay quite a bit of it,” said Seguin.
He added that Beacon includes these advocates in their committee meetings in order to receive their feedback about what’s working and what needs to be improved in these managed care programs.