As the state prepares to transition to a unified disability determination system, thus ending the Medicaid spend-down program, additional information about who will be affected by the transition, and the impact of these changes, has been released. The Governor’s Office of Health Transformation (OHT) published an overview of the changes. The impact of the state’s...
Year: 2016
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DODD Scorecard Suggests Progress on Budget Initiatives has been Slow
The Ohio Department of Development Disabilities (DODD) recently released updated data highlighting progress on several key initiatives, including expanding home-and-community based service (HCBS) waiver enrollment and increasing access to community employment. These initiatives were developed as a result of the last biennial budget, which included a $300 million investment in DODD services, mostly aimed at...
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State Hard at Work on Integrated HIV Prevention and Care Plan
As mandated by the Health Resources and Services Administration, HIV/AIDS Bureau (HRSA/HAB) and the Centers for Disease Control, Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention (CDC/DHAP), the State of Ohio has begun working on a five-year plan on HIV prevention and care needs, existing resources, barriers and gaps within jurisdictions, and how it plans to address them for...
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Cuyahoga County Health and Human Services Update
On March 31, 2016, Daphne Kelker, Contracts Administrator of Cuyahoga County Job and Family Services testified in front of Cuyahoga County Council Health, Human Services & Aging Committee. The testimony surrounded the approval of several contracts. One was a master contract for agencies to support the Cuyahoga County Tapestry System of Care program. The mission...
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CMS Release Final Managed Care Rule
On April 25th, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the much anticipated final rule significantly updating regulations pertaining to managed care organizations (MCOs) participating in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program or (CHIP). MCOs are private insurance companies that provide, or arrange the provision of, services for Medicaid enrollees in exchange...
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JMOC Update and Healthy Ohio’s First Public Comment Hearing
On April 21st, the Ohio Department of Medicaid was busy with Director John McCarthy offering testimony before the Joint Medicaid Oversight Committee (JMOC) in the morning as well as serving as host to the first of two required hearings for Ohio’s 1115 Demonstration proposal known as “Healthy Ohio” in the afternoon. During JMOC, the director...
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Will my insurance cover my IUD?
It has been well-established that long-acting and reversible methods of contraception like IUDs and the implant are a good option for many women. They provide the most effective coverage of all available contraceptive methods available, with failure rates of less than one percent; they can last up to a decade; and they can be easily...
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State Releases Request for Grant Applications for Healthier Buckeye Grant Pilot Program
The state Healthier Buckeye Advisory Council was created in the 2014 Mid-Biennium Review and was tasked with helping to establish local Healthier Buckeye Councils at the county level. The aim of local Healthier Buckeye Councils is to encourage collaboration at the community level between businesses, social services, health care providers, service recipients, schools, Medicaid managed-care...
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Extreme Poverty in Ohio: How Many People in Ohio Live on Less than $2.00 Per Day?
The World Bank and other international organizations frequently cite incomes of less than $2.00 per person per day as a benchmark for poverty levels in developing countries. Policy experts in this country have also analyzed data on the extremely poor in the United States using this same standard. Next week, the authors of $2 a...
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Joint Medicaid Oversight Committee: Medicaid Budget Update
On March 24th, the Joint Medicaid Oversight Committee (JMOC) received a Medicaid budget update from JMOC’s Executive Director Susan Ackerman and Policy Aide Gregory Craig. The update included a review of trends in enrollment and spending as well as a review of major policy initiatives in Ohio and across the nation. In part, this update...