Insights

HMA Insights: Your source for healthcare news, ideas and analysis.

HMA Insights – including our new podcast – puts the vast depth of HMA’s expertise at your fingertips, helping you stay informed about the latest healthcare trends and topics. Below, you can easily search based on your topic of interest to find useful information from our podcast, blogs, webinars, case studies, reports and more.

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383 Results found.

Blog

Webinar alert: Evidence-based treatment of opioid use disorder in correctional settings

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HMA is cohosting a webinar with the National Commission on Correctional Health Care.

Opioid use disorder is a chronic brain disease with effective, evidence-based treatments, and is a condition protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act. Prisons and jails are expected, by national health care and justice organizations and by communities, to treat incarcerated persons with OUD in accordance with evidence-based practices. This webinar reviews the most current evidence-based care for opioid withdrawal and OUD treatment and provides clinicians with strategies to move correctional health practices into compliance with national and community standards.

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Blog

HMA framework examines behavioral health crisis diversion facilities

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This week, our In Focus section provides a model framework examining an option for care for individuals with behavioral health needs who often find themselves involved with law enforcement or in hospital emergency rooms during times of crisis. The framework – Crisis Diversion Facilities – was released by Health Management Associates, led by HMA Principal Bren Manaugh and supported by Arnold Ventures as part of a larger opioid and mental health response initiative.

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Blog

Exploring flexibilities in Medicare Advantage supplemental benefits: HMA brief on access, adoption, and impacts

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An HMA-authored issue brief examines beneficiary access to, and plan adoption of, newly expanded Medicare Advantage (MA) supplemental benefit flexibilities and raises questions regarding the expected impacts of new supplemental benefit offerings on beneficiary satisfaction, outcomes, and total cost of care.

The new flexibilities for MA plans include innovative supplemental benefits offered through expansion of primarily health-related benefits, benefits offered non-uniformly, Value-Based Insurance Design (VBID), and Special Supplemental Benefits for the Chronically Ill (SSBCI).

The brief’s key finding is that enrollment in plans offering these flexibilities is relatively low and varies across geographic areas with 19% of all MA enrollees enrolled in a plan that offered at least one expanded supplemental benefit.  HMA will conduct additional analyses including interviews with key stakeholders to inform the policy community on the opportunities and challenges with the adoption and implementation of new supplemental benefits.

This brief was produced by HMA Managing Principals Jonathan Blum and Mary Hsieh, Principal Eric Hammelman, and Senior Consultant Narda Ipakchi under a grant from Arnold Ventures.

Blog

Medicare FY 2021 hospital inpatient proposed rule and COVID-19 federal flexibilities

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This week, our In Focus section reviews recent announcements and actions by Congress and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that have significant financial and operational implications for the hospital industry. This brief begins with the most recent of these actions by providing a summary of the key provisions of the CMS Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 Medicare Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) and Long-Term Acute Care Hospital (LTCH) Proposed Rule (CMS-1735-P), which includes Medicare payment updates and policy changes for the upcoming FY, with a comment deadline of July 10, 2020.  Although somewhat limited in scope compared to previous proposals, this year’s proposed rule includes several disruptive proposals that the hospital industry should carefully consider.

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Blog

Medicaid Managed Care Spending in 2019

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This week, our In Focus section reviews Medicaid managed care spending data collected in the annual CMS-64 Medicaid expenditure report. After submitting a Freedom of Information Act request to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), we have received a draft version of the CMS-64 report that is based on preliminary estimates of Medicaid spending by state for federal fiscal year (FFY) 2019. We expect the final version of the report will be completed by the end of 2020 and posted to the CMS website at that time. Based on the preliminary estimates, Medicaid expenditures on medical services across all 50 states and six territories in FFY 2019 exceeded $594 billion, with over half of all spending now flowing through Medicaid managed care programs. In addition, total Medicaid spending on administrative services was $29.5 billion, bringing total program expenditures to $623.5 billion.

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Blog

50-State Survey of Medicaid Pharmacy Directors

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This week, our In Focus section reviews key takeaways from the report, How State Medicaid Programs are Managing Prescription Drug Costs: Results from a State Medicaid Pharmacy Survey for State Fiscal Years 2019 and 2020, prepared by Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) and Health Management Associates (HMA). The report was written by HMA Managing Principal Anne Winter and Principals Kathleen Gifford and Linda Wiant with Rachel Dolan, Marina Tian, and Rachel Garfield from KFF.

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Blog

HMA examines Medicare-Medicaid integration: low FBDE enrollment in integrated programs

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This week, our In Focus section reviews an issue brief written by HMA consultants examining Medicare-Medicaid integration. In 2019, 7.7 million people in the United States were eligible to receive access to full benefits under Medicare and individual state Medicaid programs. This group of people is known as the Full Benefit Dual Eligible (FBDE) population. While FBDE enrollment in integrated programs nearly quadrupled over the past five years, the number of people enrolled in an integrated program never rose above one in 10 FBDE people.

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Blog

Examining key considerations for implementing group prenatal care

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A team of HMA consultants have authored a peer-reviewed journal article drawing on data from the recently completed five-year evaluation of the Strong Start for Mothers and Newborns II Initiative to discuss key considerations for implementing a group prenatal care model, including barriers to implementation and sustainability as well as strategies for overcoming barriers and sustaining the model.

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Blog

COVID-19 education, contact tracing, and care connections: community health workers key to sustainable local public health response

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As reported by the New York Times (An Army of Virus Tracers Takes Shape in Massachusetts, April 17), Massachusetts has hired 1,000 public health contact tracers to speed containment of COVID-19 during its surge in infections. Contact tracers are reaching out to those who have tested positive, providing information, and talking them through their recent movements and connections, using cell phones and triangulation data. They then, in turn, reach out to inform and educate those contacts.

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Blog

Dual eligible financial alignment demonstration 2020 enrollment update

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This week, our In Focus section reviews publicly available data on enrollment in capitated financial and administrative alignment demonstrations (“Duals Demonstrations”) for beneficiaries dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid (duals) in nine states: California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Texas. Each of these states has begun either voluntary or passive enrollment of duals into fully integrated plans providing both Medicaid and Medicare benefits (“Medicare-Medicaid Plans,” or “MMPs”) under three-way contracts between the state, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and the MMP. As of February 2020, approximately 371, 200 duals were enrolled in an MMP. Enrollment fell 1.2 percent from February of the previous year.

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