Carolinas Healthcare System

Community Care of North Carolina

In North Carolina, the Carolinas HealthCare System (CHS) plays a leading role in the state’s primary care initiative called Community Care of North Carolina. The program, which links with health care organizations to ensure that patients have a primary care medical home serves 750,000 Medicaid patients statewide—100,000 of which are managed by CHS.1 For CHS, one of the keys to the program is managing patients with chronic diseases and making sure these patients do not fall through the cracks when transitioning between primary care physicians, specialists and hospitals. Over the past nine years the program has saved North Carolina nearly half a billion dollars and improved patient care.