CDPHP® and Rebuilding Together Bring Hope to the Hudson Valley

Lisa was a 62-year-old single grandmother living in the Hudson Valley who had a lot on her plate. She was recovering from a stroke while also caring for her grandchildren. On top of it, her home needed some help: Stairs were deteriorating, doors wouldn’t close, windows weren’t properly sealed and the property lacked accessibility. Until Rebuilding Together Hudson Valley arrived.

As Executive Director Darcy McCourt explains, Rebuilding Together is a “33-year-young” not-for- profit that provides no-cost critical home repairs and accessibility modifications to income- qualified homeowners in Ulster and Dutchess County. Most of their work is for older adults, veterans, individuals with disabilities, and families with children. “Our mission is very simply repairing homes, revitalizing communities and rebuilding lives,” she explains.

Volunteers — over 400 of them per year! — play a huge role in the organizing’s success, but the core team is a tiny and mighty powerhouse of four individuals. To keep them healthy, Darcy chose CDPHP to support her team and the meaningful work they do across our community.

Teaming with CDPHP

When Darcy was looking for a health plan for her employees that provided the care they needed at an affordable rate, her broker pointed her toward CDPHP.

Now in their second year of CDPHP coverage, Darcy and her team are pleased with their choice. “We’re very much satisfied with it,” she says. “People were able to keep all of their medical care and their doctors,” she explains, adding that her employees also appreciate the wellness benefits.

The CDPHP team’s responsiveness, in particular, has been a huge highlight for her. When she’s come across questions or needed clarification, she was able to speak to her broker and directly with CDPHP representatives. “That was really important to me because I needed to have a better understanding of the questions I was posing so that I could share that with my staff,” she says. “People were very open and honest about why the product is what it is and why the costs were with it.”

As Darcy explains, “There’s nothing worse than asking a question or having an inquiry or worrying about something and not getting a response, particularly if it’s your health and you’re worried and you don’t know where to go.”

Luckily, with CDPHP, Darcy appreciates how working with a regional health plan makes it easier to connect her to real people who can help her talk through questions. “It feels more like a family or community instead of just a person sitting in an office,” she says.

In terms of her employees’ medical care, Darcy says that her staff has been able to get the care they needed, whether it was physical therapy or other specialized services. “That was what my staff asked for, something that was local and in their community, but they could reach outside of it if they needed to,” she says. Additionally, the comprehensive care through CDPHP has also been attractive to the organizing’s new hires and has been helpful in retaining the team’s current talent.

Overall, Darcy has been so pleased with her CDPHP experience that she’s jumped to recommend it to others. “In a heartbeat, I would recommend it. There’s not a concern at all. I have recommended CDPHP to a business networking group I’m in. We often have people who talk about health insurance, and I tell them who we have. They asked why we converted from another plan to CDPHP, and I told them it was less cost, and we maintained the things that were important to us, like the continuity of the doctors in our home base.”

A Common Mission

Darcy points out that Rebuilding Together and CDPHP share an important mission: Both organizations are looking out for their neighbors. “We know that the social determinants of health are so important. We think that’s the closest alignment that we could ever have with an insurance company, because when we know that CDPHP cares about our health, and then we can continue to care about our neighbors.”

First and foremost, Darcy senses that people at CDPHP care. “They care about my staff, they care about the individual as a community member. And that’s our mission. We care about our community as a whole, so I think we’re very well aligned.”

That concern for the community really shines through in Rebuilding Together’s story with Lisa and her home. Thanks to the organizing’s help, about 40 volunteers replaced doors and siding, optimized fire safety, installed grab bars in stairwells and, most importantly, gave Lisa a feeling of safety and security. “She’s finally able to stay there and say to her grandchildren, ‘This is always going to be your home and my home,’” Darcy shares. “That’s what I want for all of our homeowners.”

Want to learn more about CDPHP member and employer experiences? Explore their stories and learn how working with CDPHP has made a difference.

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