Medi-Cal Starts Reimbursing Community Health Workers and Promotores de Salud
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THE CHCF WEEKLY
September 27, 2022
Medi-Cal now pays for services provided by community health workers and promotores (CHW/Ps), a change that CHCF Senior Program Officer Carlina Hansen calls “revolutionary” in a recent State of Reform article.
CHW/Ps have a long history of improving the health of diverse communities, including many Medi-Cal members, even when the state wasn’t always paying for that work. The new state reimbursement should help improve the long-term sustainability of CHW/P jobs.
Hansen says it will be important to get feedback from CHW/Ps and Medi-Cal managed care plans as the new payments are implemented and to assess if reimbursement rates are sufficient to retain and attract CHW/Ps as Medi-Cal providers.
Explore more about CHW/Ps in our collection, which includes a resource center for Medi-Cal managed care plans that want to integrate CHW/Ps into their programs.
The 2022-23 state budget includes funding to recruit, train, and certify 25,000 new community health workers by 2025.
From the Blog
Barbara Feder Ostrov The CHCF Innovation Fund supports tech accelerators to bolster companies with the potential to significantly lower health costs or improve access to care for Californians with low incomes. |
Manuela Tobias, Jocelyn Wiener Now that Governor Gavin Newsom’s court system for people with severe mental illness has been enacted, counties face a series of practical questions critical to turning the fuzzy concept into a reality. |
Upcoming Events
Discharge data from emergency departments provide information on where people experiencing homelessness go for care. This webinar will highlight how linking this data with information from homeless assistance programs and state services can help policymakers make targeted investments. Read the PPIC report.
Join the California Quality Collaborative on October 11, from 11:00 AM–Noon (PT), for a webinar on how the collection of race, ethnicity, and language (REaL) data can help health care organizations understand different populations and better address health disparities.
Partner Spotlight
The California Department of Public Health has established the COVID-19 Therapeutics Equity Grant Program to help safety-net providers, including Medi-Cal providers, connect patients who test positive for COVID-19 with therapeutic treatment to decrease related morbidity and mortality. Deadline to apply is September 30.
Stories That Caught Our Attention
- Health Plan Shake-Up Could Disrupt Coverage for Low-Income Californians (California Healthline)
In a first-ever statewide contracting competition (or "procurement"), California required commercial managed care plans to rebid for their Medi-Cal contracts and compete against one another. The losing plans are now fiercely contesting the results. Related: CHCF's Chris Perrone, director of Improving Access, shared his thoughts on the procurement process and Medi-Cal's efforts to improve quality and health equity.
- They Were Entitled to Free Care. Hospitals Hounded Them to Pay. (New York Times - paywall)
More than half the nation’s roughly 5,000 hospitals are nonprofits, enjoying lucrative tax exemptions in exchange for providing such services as free care for those with low incomes. But many of the hospitals have adopted an unrelenting focus on the bottom line and strayed from their traditional charitable missions.
- COVID-19 Raises Risk of Long-Term Brain Injury, Large US Study Finds (Reuters)
People who had COVID-19 are at higher risk for a host of brain injuries a year later compared with people who were never infected by the coronavirus, a finding that could affect millions of Americans.
- Mental Health Is Political (New York Times - paywall)
Solving the mental health crisis will require fighting for people to have secure access to infrastructure that buffers them from chronic stress: housing, food security, education, child care, job security, the right to organize for more humane workplaces, and substantive action on the imminent climate apocalypse.
- Behind the New Anxiety Screening Recommendation (NPR)
The draft guidance from the US Preventive Services Task Force comes as Americans are coping with illness, isolation, loss from the pandemic, inflation, and other worries. Related: More than half of Californians say they have experienced worry or stress related to the COVID-19 pandemic in this recent CHCF poll.
- Black Californians Want Better Health Care. Here’s How We Can Achieve It (California Health Report)
What is wrong with health care for Black Californians? Related: Read the first report from CHCF's Listening to Black Californians study in preparation for the launch of the final report next week.
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