News & Bulletins Archive
Hilltop’s economic analysis using the Hilltop Health Care Reform Simulation Model was cited by several news sources today. It was cited on Baltimore’s radio station WYPR’s Maryland Morning. The show, How the Health Care Law is Affecting Maryland’s Small(ish) Businesses, explored how the ACA will affect small businesses and their employees and what the recent delay in the ACA’s implementation will mean for them. Hilltop’s most recent simulation for the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange estimated that approximately 10,000 people will be affected by the law’s mandate that individual workers have health coverage, with 5,000 anticipated to find insurance from the Maryland Health Connection and 5,000 to remain uninsured. The Baltimore Sun’s report, Businesses welcome reprieve from offering insurance, by Andrea Walker on the same subject, cites this analysis, and a report on WebMD Health News titled Maryland Delays Small-Business Enrollment, by Bara Vaida, also cites this analysis. Another piece that mentions Hilltop, Maryland Health Connection to assist families, small businesses in comparing health insurance options, was published in the Herald-Mail.
Three Hilltop staff presented at the AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting on June 23, 2013, in Baltimore, Maryland. Hospital Community Benefit Program Director Martha H. Somerville, JD, MPH, and Policy Analyst Gayle Nelson, JD, MPH, gave a poster presentation entitled Community Benefit State Law Profiles, which highlights the variation in community benefit laws across states in comparison with the federal community benefit standard. View the poster. Somerville also delivered a panel discussion, Community Health Needs Assessment: Legal Requirements, Practical Opportunities, on June 25. This presentation discusses hospital charity care/community benefits/tax exemption; federal community health needs assessment and implementation strategies; collaborative needs assessment; and the role of nonprofit hospitals in health system transformation. View the presentation.
On June 24, Hilltop Senior Research Analyst Michael Abrams, MPH, gave a podium presentation, Impact of Coordination/Integration on Medicaid Expenditures for Persons with Substance Use Disorders, at which he discussed his findings that cost savings of approximately $1,000 per member per year are correlated with coordination of care efforts targeting persons with substance use disorders. View the presentation. Abrams also presented a poster, Imminent Medicaid Enrollment Lapses after Inpatient Mental Health Treatment in Young Adult, which reveals factors that increase or decrease risk of Medicaid disenrollment among young adults (aged 18-26) discharged from an inpatient psychiatric stay. View the poster.
Community Benefit State Law Profiles, the interactive online tool developed by Hilltop’s Hospital Community Benefit Program, is featured in the Kresge Foundation’s latest news. In this article, Hospital Community Benefit Program Director Martha H. Somerville, JD, MPH, explains that there is “tremendous variation” among states’ community benefit requirements and that this tool can “help policymakers assess where their states stand now and determine where they want to go.”
Hilltop’s Hospital Community Benefit Program has added exciting new interactive features to its Community Benefit State Law Profiles. New enhancements added to the State Comparison Table enable a user to 1) sort by a selected community benefit requirement, 2) access state-specific details about a selected legal requirement, and 3) compare the community benefit requirements of multiple states.
Hilltop Hospital Community Benefit Program Policy Analyst Gayle D. Nelson, JD, MPH, gave a presentation at a National Association of Counties (NaCo) webinar titled Using the Community Health Needs Assessment to Inform Policymaking on May 30, 2013. In her presentation, Community Health Needs Assessment: A Tool for Improving Community Health, Nelson provided a legal context for community health needs assessment (CHNA); described CHNA’s role in community health improvement; and discussed CHNA requirements and processes for nonprofit hospitals. View the presentation.
Hilltop is the host and a co-sponsor of the AcademyHealth 2013 Delivery System Transformation Meeting, an adjunct meeting of the AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting (ARM) to be held in Baltimore this year. The meeting, titled Transforming Health and Health Care – Focus on Maryland, is open to all and will be held on June 21, 2013, from 8:30 am until 6:30 pm at UMBC.
The Delivery System Transformation Meeting provides a unique opportunity to bring together local health care leaders and national health services researchers, policy analysts, and other experts to get to know one another and to discuss issues of mutual interest in payment and delivery system reform and population health. The meeting will showcase Maryland innovations, such as the State Health Improvement Process (SHIP) and Health Enterprise Zones, and will also provide updates from forward-thinking leaders on health information technology, health disparities, information exchange, and safety net redesign.
Hilltop Senior Research Analyst Michael Abrams, MPH, was co-author on a presentation made recently at an international meeting focused on schizophrenia research (see citation below). The work demonstrates that, among women with serious mental illness who are engaged in Maryland Medicaid, those with substance use disorders are at elevated risk for missing breast cancer screening. By somewhat surprising contrast, women with other mental disorders (e.g., schizophrenia and depression), were not at elevated risk for missing such screening. For more information, contact mabrams@hilltop.umbc.edu.
Sullivan K., Abrams, M., Feldman, S., Myers. S., McMahon, R., & Kelly, D. (2013, April 14). Analysis of Maryland Medicaid data to estimate effects of psychiatric and substance use disorders on breast cancer screening utilization and breast cancer prevalence. 14th International Congress on Schizophrenia Research, Orlando, Florida (Poster Presentation).
Hilltop Hospital Community Benefit Program Director Martha H. Somerville, JD, MPH, gave a presentation at an Institute of Medicine (IOM) workshop titled Achieving Health Equity via the Affordable Care Act: Promises, Provisions, and Making Reform a Reality for Diverse Patients on April 22, 2013, in Hartford, Connecticut. In her presentation, Driving Health Equity through Public Policy: Hospital Community Benefits, Somerville discussed tax-exempt hospitals’ community benefit responsibilities under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and identified how the ACA requirements can be used as levers to advance health equity. View the presentation.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation recently published the results of Hilltop’s study to evaluate the outreach efforts of Maryland’s Kids First program in a report titled How Well Did Maryland Identify and Enroll Uninsured Children Who Are Potentially Eligible for Medicaid or CHIP? The report describes Hilltop’s study, the challenges that the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene faced in its attempts to obtain information from the Comptroller’s office, and how Hilltop’s findings during the course of the project led to changes in Maryland’s tax forms that enabled more targeted mailings and the enactment of new legislation that facilitates data sharing. To learn more about the study, read these three issue briefs:
Hilltop Policy Analyst Aaron Tripp, MSW, gave a presentation at the 2013 Annual Conference of the American Society on Aging in Chicago on March 14, 2013. New Jersey Care Partner Support Pilot Program: Findings—which has been presented before and continues to spark interest—discussed highlights of Hilltop’s evaluation of the Pilot Program, which was designed to improve the knowledge and skills of family caregivers for beneficiaries enrolled in waiver programs following a caregiver self-assessment. Implications for health care and social service professionals to better recognize and support families as partners in care and recommendations for further expansion of caregiver assessments were addressed.
The Hilltop Institute’s Hospital Community Benefit Program has just released a new online resource, the Community Benefit State Law Profiles. The Profiles are a compilation of each state’s community benefit laws and regulations, analyzed in the context of the ACA’s community benefit framework. A companion issue brief, Hospital Community Benefits after the ACA: The State Law Landscape, presents the Profiles’ findings and begins the analysis—in effect, viewing state community benefit standards through the lens of the ACA—to facilitate a better understanding of each state’s community benefit landscape and its significance in the context of national health reform. Read the bulletin.
UMBC and The Hilltop Institute are pleased to announce that Cynthia H. Woodcock has been named Hilltop’s next executive director. An MBA by training, Ms. Woodcock’s managerial skills span organizational development, strategic planning, marketing and new business development, system design, and financial management. Ms. Woodcock knows Hilltop well; she was a part of the organization in various capacities from 2004 to 2011. Her appointment begins March 4.
On January 31, 2013, Michael Abrams, MPH, Senior Research Analyst at The Hilltop Institute, presented research to the Performance and Evaluation Committee of Baltimore Substance Abuse System, Inc. (bSAS), demonstrating that quantitative Medicaid expenditure savings in CY 2010 for patients with substance use disorders (SUDs) were correlated with the “coordination of care reputation” of those patients’ providers. Though the work relied on an imprecise definition for “care coordination,” it nevertheless yielded highly significant point estimates for per person Medical saving on the order of $1,000 a year. This translates to calculated savings of just over $7 million in the population studied (a 59% sample of Maryland Medicaid enrollees with SUDs), Furthermore, this work was validated by separate correlations, showing that “coordination of care” was also significantly associated with reduced inpatient service use. Abrams led the research team, which included Seung Kim (Policy Analyst, Hilltop), Jayne Miller (Senior Programmer, Hilltop), Jose Arbelaez (Director of Epidemiology and Evaluation, bSAS), and Yngvild Olsen (private consultant and Medical Director for the Institutes of Behavior Resources, Inc.). This work was funded by bSAS. View the presentation. To learn more about this research, contact Michael Abrams.
Hilltop Director of Medicaid Policy Studies David Idala, MA, and Policy Specialist Yi-An Chen, MA, presented a poster at the 2012 Summit on the Science of Eliminating Health Disparities, on December 18, 2012, in National Harbor, Maryland. The poster, titled The Use of Emergency Department (ED) Services for Non-Emergent Conditions among Adults with Disabilities, displays the preliminary results of a study that explores the impact of race/ethnicity and insurance status on ED use among individuals with disabilities. View the poster.
Hilltop Long-Term Services and Supports Policy and Research Director Donna C. Folkemer, MA, gave a presentation titled Improving Care: State Legislative Role in Improving the Quality of Long-Term Services and Supports at the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) Fall Forum Pre-Conference Meeting on December 5, 2012, in Washington, DC. In her presentation, Folkemer discussed eight things legislators should know about quality. The pre-conference meeting was attended by legislators and legislative staff from across the country. View the presentation.