Who We Are

From the outside, the health care system can seem huge and imposing, and even a bit scary. At the very least, it can often be confusing to know where to start to try to get the help we need. That’s especially true for patients with complex health issues and limited incomes. Trying to sort out the many complicated variables along the road to getting well can be overwhelming, and really expensive – and not just for patients themselves, but also for their communities.

Based in Greenville, N.C., Access East, Inc. is dedicated to helping tie up those many loose ends, and not just for our patients, but also for their health care providers. We address the different pieces of patient care not as being separate from each other, but as parts of a greater whole.

You can think of it as whole-person care, a better, more efficient approach to improving the health of our patients – and not surprisingly, an approach that typically adds up to saving them money, and to financial savings for their communities as well.

What We Do

At Access East, our passion for improving the health of Eastern North Carolina (ENC) is much more than just a professional mission; our stake here is personal. This region, with all of the many health care hurdles and health challenges experienced by many of its residents, is also our home.

For more than 20 years, we’ve been providing comprehensive care management to many of our ENC neighbors who need it most, as well as cost-saving help to the primary-care and specialty providers who treat those patients. The 34 mostly rural counties we cover include some our state’s most medically complex and at-risk populations, from Medicaid patients to those who qualify for both Medicaid and Medicare (often called dual-eligibles) to patients with no insurance at all.

Our 5013(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation grew out of a series of working partnerships between health care organizations devoted to creating better access to quality care for ENC’s most vulnerable, including the chronically ill, the indigent, the underinsured and the uninsured. The goal was simple: improve patient health outcomes, and control health care costs.

Access East’s many dedicated partners include roughly 140 primary-care practices across our 34-county service area: Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), community health centers, health departments, safety-net and social service organizations, and hospitals, including the region’s largest, ECU Health Medical Center, in conjunction with the East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine, both also in Greenville.

Our three main service lines have a combined yearly budget of approximately $26 million. We receive funding from the North Carolina Division of Health Benefits (NCDHB), as well as from multiple private charitable organizations and foundations, and individual donations.

Key Service Lines

• Access East Medicaid Care Management

Our largest service line, providing coordinated, cost-effective care to roughly 97,000 Medicaid enrollees across 34 ENC counties, through a network of patient-centered medical homes. In partnership with ECU Health, we also serve about 40,000 Medicare beneficiaries.

• HealthAssist Uninsured Network

>>>  HealthAssist: An integrated, coordinated system of donated or reduced-fee health care services for low-income, uninsured residents of Beaufort, Greene, Edgecombe, Hertford, Martin and Pitt counties.

>>>  ACA Navigators: Our grant-funded Certified Marketplace Navigators provide free assistance to consumers seeking Affordable Care Act (ACA) health-insurance coverage through the state’s federally funded Healthcare Insurance Marketplace.

• Healthy Opportunities Pilot (HOP)

One of only three such programs in the state, HOP provides vital, non-emergency, non-medical services to eligible Medicaid Managed Care (aka, Managed Medicaid) enrollees, focusing on four main areas of need (food, housing, interpersonal violence/toxic stress and transportation services) across nine northeastern N.C. counties.