A Community Partnership to Improve Access and Quality of Care for Medically Indigent Uninsured Patients

Care for the uninsured is typically disjointed and inefficient with little interaction between providers within communities. The Indigent Care Collaboration (ICC) is a unique collaboration of safety net providers in Central Texas. This paper describes the structure, purpose and role of the ICC and highlights future opportunities and challenges for the organization and the community it serves. The ICC’s shared data repository which contains over 2.5 million encounter records is described, providing an important picture of the changing demographic composition, disease burden and health care utilization patterns for the medically indigent population accessing care in Central Texas. 1 University of Texas Medical Branch, Austin, TX 2 University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX 3 Indigent Care Collaboration, Austin, TX 4 Department of Pharmacy Administration, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX