The positions of 25 Community Health Plan employees have been terminated following a cut in funding to a state program CHP contracted with.

Missouri Care, an Aetna company, subcontracted CHP employees to provide wellness and prevention services to MO Healthnet clients living in Northwest Missouri. The program began in January and initially was available to about 20,000 MO Healthnet, or Medicaid, clients in the region. Now, only 8,500 to 9,000 of those clients are eligible.

“MO Healthnet reduced the scope of the program,” due to a loss of state funding, said Pamela Johnson, executive director of Missouri Care, “ ... As a result of that reduction, we did terminate 31 positions.”

Six of those positions belonged to Missouri Care, not CHP. Ms. Johnson added that Missouri Care’s services — which are meant to help MO Healthnet clients navigate the health care system by connecting them with health care providers and developing a plan for them to access the services they need — are available now only to clients with at least one of six diseases: diabetes, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart disease, high blood pressure and sickle cell disease.

Erin Wisdom can be reached at ewisdom@npgco.com.