News & Bulletins
The Hilltop Institute periodically posts news items and issues electronic bulletins to disseminate information about Hilltop activities and publications. Below are the three most recent. Go to the News and Bulletin Archive, below, to view previous posts.
Bulletin: The Hilltop Institute Helps Maryland Lower Health Insurance Premiums
Open enrollment is now underway, and premiums for health insurance offered through the Maryland Health Connection, Maryland’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace, will be lower in 2020 because of the state’s reinsurance program. Hilltop was an important behind-the-scenes player in developing the reinsurance program.
11/12/2019
Hilltop Researcher Presents at National Conference on Tobacco or Health
Hilltop Senior Policy Analyst Charles Betley, MA, presented a poster titled Estimating the Costs to Mississippi Medicaid Attributable to Tobacco Using Paid Amounts to Providers for Tobacco-Related Illnesses at the National Network of Public Health Institutes’ 2019 National Conference on Tobacco or Health held August 27-29 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The poster presented Hilltop’s study funded by the Center for Mississippi Health Policy, describing the methodology and the study’s results, which estimated that tobacco-related illness made up 9 percent of Mississippi Medicaid’s health care spending. View the poster.
09/05/2019
Bulletin: Hilltop Participates in Two New Multi-State Research Projects Using Medicaid Outcomes Distributed Research Network (MODRN) Model
With two recently awarded grants, Hilltop is contributing to the development and deployment of MODRN, developed by members of the State-University Partnership Learning Network (SUPLN) and hosted by AcademyHealth. MODRN facilitates efficient, data-driven, cross-state comparisons of Medicaid initiatives to advance policymaking. The distributed research network model enables high-quality analyses of multiple states’ Medicaid administrative data without the need to share sensitive person-level data across states.
Hilltop, with its nationally recognized 25-year partnership with the Maryland Medicaid program, is one of the founding members of the SUPLN, which now boasts 25 partnerships in 23 states. Cynthia Woodcock, Hilltop’s executive director, chairs the SUPLN steering committee. Julie Donohue, PhD, Professor of Health Policy and Management and Director of the Medicaid Research Center at the University of Pittsburgh, is leading the development of MODRN on behalf of the SUPLN. Under MODRN, each state-university partnership adopts a common data model, contributes to a common analytic plan, and conducts analyses locally on its own Medicaid data using standardized code. Findings are aggregated and shared across states.
07/15/2019