State Health and Value Strategies Technical Assistance

Since 2011, State Health and Value Strategies (SHVS), working with a group of national experts and with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has assisted states in their efforts to transform health and health care by providing technical assistance (TA) to state officials and agencies. SHVS assists states in four key domains: affordability, coverage, integration and value. By connecting states with experts in the field, SHVS is able to provide timely and meaningful technical assistance to states when they need it the most.

SHVS provides technical assistance to states in a variety of forms: the program publishes issue briefs and toolkits authored by technical experts; hosts webinars; convenes workgroups over the phone on topics such as 1332 waivers; and brings state officials together for workshops and in-person meetings.

Recognizing that states face significant fiscal, operational and procurement constraints that limit their ability to work with outside experts to address policy or programmatic issues they face, the program also provides project specific technical assistance on an in-kind basis. Project specific technical assistance is available in two different formats:

  1. Mini TA for states that have a question or are seeking information that can be addressed in one or more brief phone calls or other interactions. Depending on the nature of the technical assistance, SHVS will connect the state with one or more consultants for brief calls and/or in-person meetings.
  2. Direct TA which is a larger project of varying duration where a state needs the help of outside consultants to accomplish a specific scope of work. SHVS procures the consultant and provides the TA in-kind so that the state does not have to endure a lengthy procurement process.

The following is a selection of the direct TA projects SHVS has supported

Supporting development of a state individual mandate and/or Section 1332 waiver application — Provided guidance and technical assistance to develop a state-based individual mandate and/or Section 1332 waiver application, including: feedback on outlines of draft legislation; presenting at workgroup or committee meetings; supporting implementation; and developing messaging and communications plans.

Supporting the implementation of Medicaid expansion — Development of strategy and program guidance for the pursuit of Medicaid expansion, including the review of SPAs and input on project management structure and support for the development of a communications plan, including message development, for the roll out of expansion.

Medicaid managed care 101 — Value-based purchasing/payment and capitated MCO contract management sessions for agency implementing first MCO contract.

Medicaid MCO reform and contracting support — Conducted environmental scan, facilitated payment reform meeting with stakeholders and offered options and recommendations for improving MCO model contract sections to encourage provider-level payment reform.

Medicaid pharmacy payment analysis, environmental scan and policy recommendations — Examined current state data overall and by managed care organization (MCO), environmental scan of other pharmacy payment policies and presented Medicaid agency with options and recommendations for improved quality and cost-effectiveness.

Payment model development, stakeholder facilitation and Medicaid policy recommendations — Conducted data analysis to create actionable, comparable estimates of cost and quality for episodes of care to help identify potential candidate episodes, facilitated stakeholder meetings, and offered policy recommendations to implement an episode-of-care program.

Statewide stakeholder summit planning and execution —  Planned and executed statewide summit on population health innovation to educate stakeholders on state population health/total cost of care model and solicit feedback on the model components; SHVS offered policy recommendations for implementation based on the stakeholder summit.

For additional information about the SHVS program, and the TA provided, please refer to our Overview document.