About Us: Inside SFHP: History
Our History
San Francisco Health Plan was created in 1994 by the City and County of San Francisco to provide services in a managed care system for people who qualified for Medi-Cal. We enrolled our first member in 1997, and today have over 32,000 members enrolled in our Medi-Cal program alone.
Since 1997, we have added four programs in addition to Medi-Cal; three of those are health coverage expansion programs that were started by us.
Our first expansion occurred in 1998 when we were chosen as the Healthy Families Program community provider plan for San Francisco. Our Healthy Families Program now provides comprehensive health insurance for over 5,800 children.
In 1999, we created California’s first insurance program for In-Home Supportive Service (IHSS) workers. IHSS workers provide in-home care to disabled and elderly people who are at risk for transfer to skilled nursing facilities, but wish to remain in their homes. Until 1999, IHSS workers themselves had no health insurance. Today, more than 7,000 have comprehensive health insurance through our Healthy Workers program. Numerous other counties have followed our lead by creating similar programs.
In 2002, we launched the Healthy Kids program, providing essentially universal health insurance for San Francisco children aged 0-18.
In 2004, the City provided funding to extend Healthy Kids coverage to young adults and parents through age 24. We are proud to be the first county in the nation to cover young adults. To date, there are over 5,500 San Franciscans served by what is now the Healthy Kids & Young Adults program.
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