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Our History - A Timeline
1993
New Hampshire Healthy Kids Corporation (NHHK) was established by special legislative act. The organization is governed by a 17-member volunteer Board of Directors comprised of six representatives of state government, seven appointees of specific stakeholder organizations, and four members at-large elected by the Board.
1994
An Executive Director was hired.
1995
NHHK received its 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt determination through the Internal Revenue Service. In partnership with Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Hampshire and the state’s twenty-six hospitals, NHHK began covering children, from age 3 to age 18, in an unsubsidized but low-cost managed care plan.
1996
The program extended medical benefits to infants and toddlers and added dental benefits through a partnership with Northeast Delta Dental.
1997
Working closely with schools and health care providers to promote the program, NHHK was successful in enrolling 8% of the state’s uninsured children. Congress created the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), and appropriated $24 billion over five years through Title XXI of the Social Security Act to encourage states to expand publicly supported health coverage options for uninsured children.
1998
New Hampshire’s Title XXI Plan was approved in September 1998, creating a new alliance between the Department of Health and Human Services, the NH Healthy Kids Corporation and the Healthy New Hampshire Foundation (now known as the HNHfoundation). The “Every Kid Covered” campaign was launched to create awareness of the expanded options for children’s health insurance.
1999
Enrollment opened in the new subsidized health insurance program for children called Healthy Kids Silver. NHHK took on responsibility for coordinating outreach for the new program as well as for Medicaid which was promoted as Healthy Kids Gold. Best practices in making it easier for families to apply for coverage were implemented such as a mail-in application process.
2000
NHHK celebrates its 5th anniversary in covering kids. The first quality assurance initiative was launched to evaluate family satisfaction. The initiative also evaluated access to, and use of healthcare services in the Healthy Kids programs.
2001
On an overwhelming bipartisan 338-40 roll call vote, the New Hampshire House approved the first state appropriation of $3.5 million to subsidize Healthy Kids coverage for children of working families. This action was later upheld in the State Senate.
2002
The Department of Health and Human Services and New Hampshire Healthy Kids agreed to centralize the application processing and case management for all the Healthy Kids programs as a way to better serve families and achieve cost savings and increase efficiency. State eligibility workers from DHHS District Offices around the state were transferred into the new centralized mail-in enrollment center at the Healthy Kids corporate headquarters.
2003
For second year in a row, Census Bureau data ranks New Hampshire with third lowest percentage of uninsured children. New Hampshire reduced the rate of uninsured children from 10.8% in 1995 to 5.2% in 2003.
2004
New Hampshire maintained its 3rd best state in the nation ranking for percentage of uninsured children. US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist calls the Healthy Kids programs “a national model.”
2005
In 2005, NH Healthy Kids celebrated its tenth anniversary of covering kids. Over the past decade, NHHK has helped more than 70,000 children in accessing health coverage.
2006
New federal requirements to verify citizenship and identity added challenges for families to enroll their eligible children in the Healthy Kids programs. For the first time in three years, the uninsured rate in New Hampshire increased to six percent. Despite those challenges, New Hampshire Healthy Kids made progress through funding from a Covering Kids and Families grant. With the help of a health literacy expert, NHHK facilitated the design of a new and improved Healthy Kids application.
With leadership from the Cheshire Medical Center, community application assistors teamed up with school nurses and administrators in SAU #29 to launch the 100% Schools Initiative, a community-based strategy to connect all eligible, uninsured school-age children to the Healthy Kids program.
2007
In 2007, Governor Lynch and the New Hampshire Legislature approved funding for both outreach and coverage to enroll an additional 10,000 eligible, uninsured children in the Healthy Kids program.
The University of New Hampshire’s Carsey Institute released an issue brief focused on New Hampshire Healthy Kids and the success of New Hampshire in achieving one of the lowest uninsured rates for children in the country.2008
New Hampshire Healthy Kids and the NH Department of Health and Human Services staff participated in the Southern Institute on Children and Families retention project, known as “Retention Initiative: Achieving Stability in Medicaid and SCHIP Coverage.” NHHK and DHHS staff worked toward the project goal of reducing the amount of procedural closures, by examining current renewal procedures to identify opportunities for improvement.
Enrollment in the Healthy Kids Silver program reached a record high with 8,331 enrolled at the end of 2008.2009
New Hampshire Healthy Kids welcomed Harvard Pilgrim Health Care as the medical insurance partner for the Healthy Kids Silver and Buy-In programs.