$114 Million: The amount L.A. Care Health Plan and Health Net will invest over the next several years to address the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles County. Due to the growing number of seniors and people with disabilities experiencing homelessness, the funding will be used to identify the daily living needs of unhoused people and connect them with caregiver help, along with securing leases on as many as 1,900 housing units and paying for things like vacancy coverage and trash services.
Buckeye Health Decline: Ohioans have experienced a clear decrease in overall health, according to the Health Policy Institute of Ohio’s annual Health Value Dashboard, where Ohio is compared to the rest of the country based on general health outcomes tied in with social determinants of health. Although there are some improvements, after looking at 10 years of compiling data for the dashboard, the Institute says Ohioans are living less healthy lives compared to most other states. The dashboard shows a clear decrease in mental health treatment for adults as well as a decrease in preventative dental care for children. Tobacco usage is not decreasing as quickly as it is in other states. 33% of smoking in the state was contributed to “adverse childhood experiences.”
Labor Boost: Kaiser Permanente is trying to increase the number of mental health providers through their Mental Health Scholars Academy, currently offered only to their California employees. The integrated delivery network will pay 75% of tuition at a master’s program and then offer payment and benefits to those graduates as they complete their post-master's supervised clinical training, something that many recent graduates do on an unpaid basis.
New Nurse News: HCA Healthcare announced during National Nurse’s Week it will provide $90M to open 20 new centers for nurse clinical advancement and IT training over the next three years. HCA will also invest $34.5M to help Kansas City-based Research College of Nursing expand through a new 78,000 square foot HCA Healthcare Center for Clinical Advancement to be completed by 2025. The center will include a patient simulation laboratory, classrooms, and training technologies.
All Bets Off Kenny Rogers: More payers are covering therapy for gamblers but not in every setting and not as restrictive as you might think. Excellus BCBS allows OP therapy for gamblers without pre-approval. Residential, partial hospitalization and Inpatient services are thought to be investigational. The biological dad for our oldest foster kid has struggled for a number of years with this behavior–using salary to fuel the addiction, putting his family and our oldest in a tough place at times–but what is clear is that social factors have as much to do with the cause of this behavior as anything. How OP therapy addresses these factors will be important for this benefit and treatment to have any success. One caution when evaluating centers that offer “gambling addiction treatment” is to evaluate whether they have “compulsion specialists.”
Behavioral Benefit Buildout: Effective July 1, 2023, BCBS Michigan will begin covering Partial Hospitalization Programs (PHP) for SUD treatment and Intensive Outpatient Programs (IOP) for mental health as a standard benefit for all commercial members. Currently, BCBS covers PHP only for mental health and IOP only for substance use disorders.
Marriage Is What Brings Us Together, Today: Partnerships are continuing - Humana is partnering with Longevity Health Plan, which specializes in serving individuals in senior living settings, to offer Special Needs Plans for Medicare-eligible members living in skilled nursing and senior living facilities. The plans are launching in South Carolina and Georgia this year and will expand to five more states in 2024. OhioHealth and Intermountain recently announced they are partnering with Surgery Partners, which will help manage and develop ASCs. Option Care, the infusion provider, announced plans to acquire home health company Amedisys last week. The combined company hopes to use this to negotiate case rates and bundled payment with payers.
Extra Point: So, this one took a while to write folks as on the first attempt to draft it I fumbled the snap and got sacked by a long week, a stressful and frustrating string of Boston sports team losses, and the important job of playing dad to a labradoodle with ADHD. There’s the 19-year-old who swept in from college like Hurricane Gloria leaving his hair, dishes, and laundry all over the house and my favorite 17-year-old daughter who is in the midst of getting ready for her first prom with a kid who strangely reminds me of me. And our 23-year-old graduates college Sunday and needed my help with tickets and a cover letter for a job as a translator for a population of Burmese and Thai speaking families and discharge support liaison at a hospital because, like a lot of kids, she’s looking to find a job, in healthcare of all places. “Thanks for helping with the letter,” she said, “but what does ACO, DME, VBC, CMS, BCBS, OCD, PT, AWP, ASD, and PHE mean….do I need to know what these are for the interview you think.” Good lord!