UMass Medical School health policy expert Katharine London, MS, will discuss the pediatric asthma bundled payment model she helped design for MassHealth, the Massachusetts Medicaid program, in a Center for Health Care Strategies’ webinar June 2.
“State Approaches to Providing Health-Related Supportive Services through Medicaid” will examine how some states are using Medicaid to pay for nontraditional health-related services through accountable care organizations, health homes, community health teams, accountable communities for health and other delivery system reforms. The Children’s High-Risk Asthma Bundled Payment demonstration will be one of two models highlighted during the webinar, which will be held from 1 to 2:30 p.m.
The webinar is based on a Center for Health Care Strategies brief released late last year. In preparing the brief, staff interviewed London, a principal in the Center for Health Law and Economics, a unit within UMass Medical School’s Commonwealth Medicine division.
Massachusetts’ payment initiative was geared toward children ages 2 to 18 with high-risk asthma, including patients whose disease is poorly controlled and those who have been treated at a hospital for asthma or had a corticosteroid prescription for asthma during the past 12 months. The bundled payment would give a monthly fee to providers for asthma-related goods and services not traditionally covered by insurance. The funding environment changed before the initiative was implemented.
Commonwealth Medicine began collaborating with MassHealth on the asthma initiative in 2011, shortly after legislation required the state to develop bundled payment models for health care.