We describe the impact of community health workers (CHWs) providing community-based support services to enrollees who are high consumers of health resources in a Medicaid managed care system. We conducted a retrospective study on a sample of 448 enrollees who were assigned to field-based CHWs in 11 of New Mexico’s 33 counties. The CHWs provided patients education, advocacy and social support for a period up to 6 months. The incorporation of field-based, community health workers as part of Medicaid managed care to provide supportive services to high resource-consuming enrollees can improve access to preventive and social services and may reduce resource utilization and cost.
