Integrating Medicaid Supplemental Payments into Value-Based Purchasing
New health care delivery and reimbursement systems and new federal regulations will result in changes in how states deploy their Medicaid resources through supplemental payments in the coming years.
A new Commonwealth Fund report describes the kinds of supplemental Medicaid payments states currently make to hospitals – such as disproportionate share and upper payment limit payments – and notes the differing degree to which individual states use such supplemental payments.
It also describes how those supplemental payments may be restructured in the coming years to foster greater use of value-based purchasing and to reward achieving state-created quality goals through new delivery and reimbursement systems such as accountable care organizations, bundled payments, shared savings program, capitated arrangements, and shared risk.
Such changes have potentially serious implications for Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals – as SNAP members learned first-hand from state Medicaid director Leesa Allen when she met with them in November in Philadelphia to discuss the commonwealth’s plans for value-based purchasing and changes in Medicaid reimbursement.
Learn more about what the future may have in store for Medicaid supplemental payments in the Commonwealth Fund report Integrating Medicaid Supplemental Payments into Value-Based Purchasing.
Included in this edition are stories about problems older adults are encountering when they seek to enroll in the state’s Aging Waiver program; an update on the implementation of Community HealthChoices, the new state program of managed long-term services and supports for qualified seniors; upcoming Medicare changes and enrollment and application deadlines; coverage of diabetes testing supplies for dual eligibles; new state guidelines addressing access to treatment for mental health conditions and substance abuse disorders; and more.
Since that time the state’s Medicaid expansion has added 670,000 Pennsylvanians to the ranks of the insured, with others purchasing insurance through the federal health insurance marketplace.
HealthChoices, Pennsylvania’s Medicaid managed care program, seeks to purchase 7.5 percent of Medicaid services through value-based purchasing arrangements in calendar year 2017, 15 percent in 2018, and 30 percent in 2019. The Hospital Quality Incentive Program seeks to facilitate achieving these goals.
In making these recommendations, CMS seeks to make greater use of managed long-term services and supports and home- and community-based services when serving individuals who might otherwise need costly nursing home care.
The 20 centers of excellence, which will be licensed by the state’s Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs, are expected to be open by October 1.