Medicaid update

Yesterday’s Medicaid Council focused on improving enrollment and quality performance in the program. From the new ConneCT Dashboard we learned that there is no longer a backlog of enrollment documents waiting to be scanned into the system, that waiting times for the call center are down from 75 to 39 minutes, but that the hours of interruption on the website were up in March from February. However the system has not been down at all in the last two weeks. Council members congratulated DSS on sharing important information but questions remain about the call abandonment rate and wait times to abandonment. DSS outlined the continuing work to reduce wait times and service interruptions.

DSS also reported on new quality measures in the program across eligibility categories and practice settings. While CT generally compares about equally with national Medicaid measures, care delivered at hospital clinics and/or to members not attributed to a primary care provider was significantly lower on 18 of 23 measures. Apparently only two hospitals are reporting quality data, which may be impacting those results. Questions remain about definitions of measures and ordered vs. received care, which may be a clue to underservice and gaps in care. While there is a great deal of work to do on many measures, Council members thanked DSS for comprehensive information we never had in the past.