Maryland’s Health Enterprise Zones, state-funded initiatives designed to improve health care outcomes and prevent unnecessary hospitalizations in underserved communities, were associated with large reductions in inpatient stays, according to a study by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The study, published in the October issue of Health Affairs, links the Health Enterprise Zones to a decline of more than 18,000 inpatient stays in the four years of the initiative, and an overall health care cost reduction of about $93 million.
“We see a large cost saving here from a relatively small investment,” says study lead author Darrell J. Gaskin, PhD, the William C. and Nancy F. Richardson Professor in Health Policy in the Department of Health Policy and Management and director of the Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions at the Bloomberg School.
Maryland in 2013 designated five small areas of the state as Health Enterprise Zones: Annapolis/Morris Blum, Capitol Heights, Caroline and Dorchester counties, Greater Lexington Park and West Baltimore.