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.
Dates: September 11-12, 2017
Location: Renaissance Chicago Downtown Hotel
Waivers, block grants and per capita caps, member premiums and copays, health savings accounts, expansion, and new benefit design and funding models will take center stage as 35 speakers from leading health plans, states and providers join Health Management Associates for the high-level, two-day conference The Future of Medicaid is Here: Implications for Payers, Providers and States.
Integrated Care: A Guide for Effective Implementation is co-edited by HMA’s Lori Raney, MD and Gina Lasky, PhD, MAPL and Collaborative Care Consulting’s Clare Scott, LCSW. The book provides a detailed, thoughtful, and experience-based guide to effective implementation of integrated behavioral healthcare. Using evidence and on the ground experience, the authors share practical and actionable advice for a complex model of care.
Here is an update on The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) extending the timeline for states to comply with a 2014 rule defining the settings for Medicaid home and community-based services (HCBS). On May 9, 2017, the CMS Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services issued an Informational Bulletin extending the deadline for states to demonstrate compliance with the settings criteria by three years, to March 17, 2022. It does not extend the deadline for final CMS approval of Statewide Transition Plans, which must still be approved by March 17, 2019. The bulletin makes no changes to the underlying rule, nor indicates plans to do so.
This topic comes to us from HMA’s Anissa Lambertino, PhD, of our Chicago office, and Lori Raney, MD, of our Denver office, and Sarah Arvey, PhD, of our Austin office. May is Mental Health Month, and the first week in May is recognized as National Anxiety and Depression Awareness week. Anissa, Lori, and Sarah’s work, highlighted below, utilized geospatial mapping of prevalence of depression among Medicaid beneficiaries and treatment with FQHC locations in rural southeastern Ohio, revealing potential best practices.
This week, we reviewed recent Medicaid enrollment trends in capitated, risk-based managed care in 25 states.[1] Many state Medicaid agencies elect to post monthly enrollment figures by health plan for their Medicaid managed care population to their websites. This data allows for the timeliest analysis of enrollment trends across states and managed care organizations. Nearly all 25 states have released monthly Medicaid managed care enrollment data through the first quarter (Q1) of 2017. This report reflects the most recent data posted.
This week, we reviewed two proposed statewide Medicaid managed long-term services and supports (MLTSS) program designs. Alabama is currently accepting public comments on a plan to implement provider-driven Integrated Care Networks (ICNs) to provide MLTSS statewide to roughly 25,000 beneficiaries who are residing in nursing facilities or receiving home and community based services (HCBS) through three of the state’s Medicaid HCBS waiver programs. Meanwhile, Ohio Governor John Kasich proposed in his upcoming state budget to implement a statewide MLTSS program for more than 100,000 beneficiaries in the state. We review both states’ plans for MLTSS, including market sizes, implementation timing, and existing Medicaid managed care plans in the states.
This blog post was authored by HMA clinicians
Margaret Kirkegaard, MD, MPH, and Jeffrey Ring, PhD.
Patient: I am anxious about my results, Doctor.
Doctor: Let’s take a look … Yes, you do indeed have cancer. I will refer you to the surgeon for an evaluation as fast as possible. You must have questions.
Patient: (Silent, in shock)
Doctor: OK, well hang out here for a few minutes, and our medical assistant will bring you contact information for the surgeon. We are backed up with patients today, so this may take a short while.
This brief exchange illustrates missed opportunities for healthcare clinicians to provide empathic relationship-centered care.
Health Management Associates is pleased to announce that Early Bird Registration is now open for our second conference on Trends in Publicly Sponsored Healthcare, September 11-12, at the Renaissance Chicago Downtown Hotel. The theme of this year’s event is The Future of Medicaid is Here: Implications for Payers, Providers and States.
Featured speakers already include some of the nation’s most innovative healthcare leaders. Visit the conference website to receive the Early Bird rate and stay up to date on the latest conference news.
SVC, founded by CMS Administrator Seema Verma, is now part of Health Management Associates (HMA). The acquisition, announced March 13 by HMA founder Jay Rosen, was finalized late Friday, March 31. SVC now becomes HMA Medicaid Market Solutions (HMA MMS), a subsidiary of HMA.
This week, HMA Principal Juan Montanez, of our Washington, D.C. office, provides an update on the fiscal crisis in Puerto Rico, the relationship between the fiscal crisis and Puerto Rico’s Government Health Plan (GHP), as well as what may lie ahead for the GHP. Puerto Rico has been in the news over the last couple of years, primarily because of the central government’s inability to meet its debt obligations. In 2015 the central government’s finances reached a point where it could have literally run out of cash to service its debt and fund regular operations. A significant contributor to this fiscal crisis is the cost of and associated funding for the GHP, known colloquially on the island as Mi Salud (“My Health”). This article provides some history and context on the GHP, in addition to outlining current proposals for addressing the program’s impending funding “cliff.”
March 30th is Doctors’ Day, and for most physicians that means a special lunch in the hospital cafeteria or a carnation on their white coat. But a few years ago, I hung up my white coat and made the transition to healthcare consulting. The questions immediately started. Won’t you miss seeing patients? What exactly will you do? Did you lose your license? That last one is my favorite. So what exactly is a doctor like me doing in a place like this?
This week, we reviewed updated reports issued by the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on Medicaid expansion enrollment from the “December 2016 Medicaid and CHIP Application, Eligibility Determination, and Enrollment Report,” published on February 28, 2017. Additionally, we review 2017 Exchange enrollment data from the “Health Insurance Marketplaces 2017 Open Enrollment Period: Final State-Level Public Use File,” published by CMS on March 15, 2017. Combined, these reports present a picture of Medicaid and Exchange enrollment at the beginning of 2017, representing more than 74 million Medicaid and CHIP enrollees and more than 12 million Exchange enrollees.
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