How To Get Health Data Infrastructure Right For This Moment Of Medicaid Transformation

Through its California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal (CalAIM) program, one of California’s goals is to “improve quality outcomes, reduce health disparities, and transform the delivery system through value‑based initiatives, modernization, and payment reform” for its Medicaid program (known as Medi-Cal).

California is not the only state coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic with substantial plans to transform Medicaid through whole-person care. North Carolina is investing $430 million in a Medicaid Transformation Fund to transition beneficiaries to managed care and expand pilots providing social services in lieu of medical care. Arizona’s Whole Person Care Initiative is providing social support and referrals to Medicaid enrollees in partnership with managed care plans. Meanwhile, Connecticut’s lawmakers expanded Medicaid to undocumented children and passed far-reaching health equity reforms declaring racism a public health crisis and investing in better data collection. These initiatives share an understanding that improving the health of Medicaid enrollees requires much broader, more inclusive, and more radically data-centered thinking than we’ve ever seen before.

Read the article by Claudia Williams, CEO, Manifest MedEx, published in HealthAffairs.