Sep, 13, 2024

State Health Updates

  • Colorado – Governor Polis and the Department of Health Care & Policy Financing announced the Hospital Price Transparency Tool, which allows employers, consumers, policymakers, and other payers and state regulators to compare the costs of more than 5,000 procedures at 82 Colorado hospitals. The tool compares hospitals’ gross charges, cash discounted prices, estimated Medicare costs, and commercially negotiated prices. 
  • Connecticut – Department of Social Services (DSS) Commissioner Andrea Barton Reeves appointed William Halsey as the agency’s next Medicaid Director. Halsey has been acting as interim Medicaid Director since July and has been in state government for nearly 20 years serving the last four years as deputy director of DSS’s Health Services Division. Congratulations Bill!
  • Delaware – The Delaware Division of Public Health and Delaware State Health Assessment (SHA)/State Health Improvement Plan (SHIP) Partnership Coalition are seeking public input on the draft 2023 Delaware State Health Assessment, a statewide assessment identifying the primary health needs of Delawareans. The SHA is conducted every five years and will inform the co-creation of a SHIP with the participation of stakeholders from many sectors.
  • Massachusetts – Governor Healey signed into law an Act to Improve Quality and Oversight of Long-Term Care. The Act includes significant changes to MassHealth policies regarding estate recovery, limiting estate recovery to nursing home care and certain other long term care costs required by the federal government. The Act also removes estate recovery for people with disabilities receiving assistance under MassHealth’s CommonHealth program. To assist state officials in evaluating their estate recovery policies, SHVS published a toolkit states can use to identify where they may have flexibility to make the policies more equitable and less burdensome for affected low-income families.
  • Minnesota – The Minnesota Department of Human Services published a Health Care Programs Renewal Equity Report, which examines renewal rates through the unwinding from July 2023 through March 2024. By March 2024, overall disenrollment rates decreased, disparities in disenrollment for Black and most American Indian enrollees disappeared and disparities for Hispanic/Latinx enrollees narrowed.
  • New Hampshire – CMS approved a state plan amendment (SPA) for mobile crisis services in New Hampshire. This is the 20th mobile crisis SPA approved. As a reminder, SHVS published an expert perspective on the enhanced payment available through the American Rescue Plan Act for community-based mobile crisis services.
  • New Mexico – Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced that $46 million is available for rural healthcare providers in the state through the Rural Health Care Delivery Fund to support vital services in underserved areas.
  • New York – The New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) announced a proposed regulation that would require health insurers to request race, ethnicity, preferred language, sexual orientation and gender identity data. Policyholders would have the option to provide this information through a questionnaire administered separately from the application process. The demographic data will aid DFS and insurers in identifying and remediating systemic health inequities.
  • North Carolina – The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services announced the release of a new report, Transforming North Carolina’s Behavioral Health System: Investing in a System That Delivers Whole-Person Care When and Where People Need It. The report outlines the state’s efforts to transform the public behavioral health system to deliver high-quality, equitable, accessible care that meets people where they are in their communities.
  • Pennsylvania – The Shapiro-Davis administration announced $56.5 million in grant funding to combat gun violence and create more afterschool and out-of-school opportunities for kids. The funding comes after Governor Shapiro signed an executive order re-establishing the Office of Gun Violence Prevention.
  • Washington – The Office of the Insurance Commissioner announced that 11 health insurers have been approved to sell in Washington’s 2025 Exchange health insurance market with an approved average rate increase of 10.7%.