CEO Update 190
House Ways & Means Committee to Host Hearing Next Week on Strengthening
Child Welfare
The House Ways and Means Committee is scheduled to conduct a hearing next Wednesday, June 26 focused on strengthening child welfare by reauthorizing Title IV-B, a program serving children and youth in foster care. Policymakers are expected to review youth Residential Treatment Facilities (RTFs) during the hearing.
Among witnesses invited to testify is Paris Hilton, who has spoken about her turbulent experience at a youth treatment center and is an advocate for S.1351/H.R.2955, The Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act. The bill establishes an interagency Federal Work Group on Youth Residential Programs to support and implement best practices regarding the health and safety, care, treatment, and appropriate placement of youth in youth residential programs.
The hearing is part of the Committee’s ongoing focus to reauthorize the Social Security Act’s Title IV-B programs. The Committee has previously held several hearings to examine various programs included in Title IV-B. The Title IV-B program provides flexible funding for states to support family preservation, reunification, adoption, and permanency for children in foster care; however, many consider the program outdated, and Congress has not reauthorized it since 2008.
NABH will submit comments to the Ways & Means Committee and will also share our new youth RTF fact sheet, which highlights 10 essential facts about youth RTFs.
The hearing comes on the heels of last week’s Senate Finance Committee hearing about RTFs, “Youth Residential Treatment Facilities: Examining Failures and Evaluating Solutions” and a partisan report, Warehouse of Neglect: How Taxpayers Are Funding Systemic Abuse in Youth Residential Treatment Facilities, which cites limitations and problems at youth RTFs and fails to recognize the critical care, treatment, and educational support these programs provide to America’s youth. NABH sent this letter to the Senate Finance Committee last week in conjunction with the hearing.
CMS Announces Funding Opportunity Application Period for the Innovation in Behavioral Health Model
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) this week released its notice of funding opportunity application for the Innovation in Behavioral Health (IBH) model that focuses on improving the behavioral and physical health outcomes and quality of care for Medicare and Medicaid enrollees who experience moderate to severe behavioral health conditions.
The IBH Model is a state-based model that state Medicaid agencies (SMAs) lead with a goal of aligning payment between Medicaid and Medicare for integrated care.
CMS will select up to eight SMAs to participate in the IBH Model, and these agencies will use cooperative agreement funding to develop necessary infrastructure and capacity to implement the IBH Model. The SMAs will recruit “Practice Participants” to deliver care, and they will receive funding to support necessary upgrades to health information technology, electronic health records, practice transformation activities, and staffing to implement the model.
CMS will issue award notices to selected SMAs in mid-December. Learn more from this CMS IBH model overview fact sheet. For additional questions, you can reach the IBH Model team at IBHModel@cms.hhs.gov.
SAMHSA Announces New Way to Order 988 Print Materials
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has announced a new website to order 988 awareness printed materials.
“Over the past two years, we’ve heard your requests to simplify and improve the ordering process for 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline print materials,” SAMHSA said in an announcement. “We know that print materials are a critical need for all who are working to raise awareness about 988 across the country, and we have been working behind the scenes to improve this process.”
Providers and other partners will still be able to use the “order print materials” link from SAMHSA’s 988 Partner Toolkit.
CDC Reports 26% Drop in Uninsured Americans Since 2019
New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) show 7.6% of Americans did not have health insurance in 2023, compared with 10.3% of Americans without health insurance in 2019, reflecting a 26% decrease in the number of uninsured Americans.
Meanwhile, the NHIS reported that among adults ages 18–64 living in Medicaid expansion states, the percentage with public coverage increased to 25.2% in 2023 from 23.4% in 2019. A similar increase in public coverage was observed among adults living in non-Medicaid expansion states 18.1% in 2023 from 15.1% in 2019.
In a story this week, Behavioral Health Business highlighted how more Americans with health insurance could affect the behavioral healthcare segment.
Reminder: ONC Funding Opportunity Seeks to Accelerate BHIT
HHS’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) last month announced a funding opportunity totaling $2 million for fiscal year 2024 under the Leading Edge Acceleration Projects (LEAP) in Health Information Technology (Health IT).
ONC is seeking applications that address two areas of interest. The first area seeks to develop innovative ways to evaluate and improve the quality of healthcare data used in artificial intelligence (AI) tools in healthcare to improve electronic health record technologies.
The second area is focused on designing, developing, and piloting lightweight health IT solutions that can enhance health IT capabilities in behavioral healthcare settings and improve care coordination between behavioral healthcare and clinical healthcare settings.
“These two areas of interest are a natural extension of ONC’s work,” Steve Posnack, deputy national coordinator for health information technology and an NABH 2024 Annual Meeting speaker, said in a statement. “We look forward to receiving innovative applications and seeing the impacts generated by selected awardees.”
Click here to learn more about the grant opportunity; ONC will accept applications through July 12, 2024.
Reminder: Please Submit Data to NABH’s Denial-of-Care Portal
We urge all NABH members to join those already submitting data to our Denial-of-Care Portal.
We are beginning to use aggregated portal data to illustrate and compare prior authorization practices for commercial, Medicare Advantage, and Medicaid managed care denials.
Policymakers have expressed particular interest in our aggregate estimate on days of uncompensated charity care, as well as the length of delayed health plan responses to prior-authorization requests.
To support this advocacy push, we strongly encourage all NABH members to submit data to the portal. Please contact NABH Associate Manager for Congressional Affair Emily Wilkins with questions about the data metrics that we are collecting and/or the data-submission process.
Fact of the Week
Hospitals that report using AI to detect patterns of drug diversion – when drugs are stolen from hospitals – nearly doubled to 56% in 2023 from 29% in 2019, according to a Wolters Kluwer survey.
For questions or comments about this CEO Update, please contact Jessica Zigmond.