News & Bulletins Archive
The Hilltop Institute has opened a search for a Senior Director of Technology and Compliance/Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to lead the development of the organizational vision for technologic innovation, translating that vision into strategic priorities and work plans, tracking progress toward goals and priorities, and ensuring delivery of technology solutions that solidify Hilltop’s standing as a leading data-driven state health policy research organization.
To see the full job announcement and to apply, go here.
Hilltop Executive Director Cynthia Woodcock partnered with Attorney Michael N. Fine to present a session titled State Oversight of Hospital Community Benefits at the October 19, 2021, American Health Law Association meeting, 2021 AHLA Tax Issues for Health Care Organizations. In their presentation, Woodcock and Fine gave an overview of federal community benefit rules, described the post-Affordable Care Act landscape and recent federal activity, and discussed Oregon’s new law establishing community benefit spending floors and other policy levers used by states to promote population health through hospital community benefit activities. View the presentation. For more information, go here.
The New York Times partnered with Hilltop researchers Morgan Henderson and Morgane Mouslim for a front-page article and a companion article in its Sunday, August 22, 2021 edition on hospital pricing. In a new HillTopic post, Hilltop Executive Director Cynthia Woodcock discusses the issue of hospital price transparency and Drs. Henderson and Mouslim’s research.
Although Maryland has made substantial progress in “rebalancing” Medicaid expenditures for long-term services and supports from institutional care to home and community-based services (HCBS) and the number of individuals who are using HCBS has increased, program availability is limited and registries of individuals seeking these services remain long.
In a new HillTopic post, Executive Director Cynthia Woodcock discusses this issue and introduces a just-published Hilltop report on this topic that was presented to the Joint Chairmen of the Maryland General Assembly.
Read the Bulletin.
The Hilltop Institute is pleased to welcome Todd Switzer as Chief Actuary and Director of Rate Setting and Financial Analysis. In this role, Switzer will lead Hilltop’s work with the Maryland Department of Health to develop risk-adjusted capitation payments for health plans participating in HealthChoice, Maryland’s Medicaid managed care program, which insures over 1.3 million Marylanders. Switzer will join Hilltop on June 1.
The Hilltop Institute at UMBC has been awarded research funding for three new projects, the findings of which will inform both national and state health policy—State Medicaid Fees for Services Related to Opioid Use Disorder: Building the Evidence-Base to Inform State Policies, Healthcare Utilization of Violence-Related Injury in the State of Maryland, and Estimating the Costs to Mississippi Medicaid for Expansion to Childless Adults.
Duane Glossner, The Hilltop Institute’s Director of Rate Setting, has announced his retirement effective December 31, 2020. For the past 21 years, Duane’s stalwart leadership and expert technical support for Maryland’s rate setting process has been unparalleled.
In Hilltop’s inaugural HillTopic blog post, Executive Director Cynthia Woodcock writes about partnerships between state Medicaid programs and public universities and shares two value propositions she authored.
Dr. Fei Han has received a COVID-19 Accelerated Translational Incubator Pilot (ATIP) award for research to help predict and reduce patients’ risk of being hospitalized due to COVID-19. He will further develop the Hilltop Pre-AH Model™, a preventative risk model, to apply to pandemic conditions.
The project is funded by UMBC and the University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB) Institute for Clinical & Translational Research (ITCR).
Educational institutions are critical voices in a democratic society. It is incumbent on all of us to educate ourselves on the inherent worth of all individuals, particularly Black people and other people of color whose lives, health, and wellbeing are threatened. As partners in building a democratic society, we should not be silent.
UMBC’s Hilltop Institute stands against racism in all its forms—systemic (structural and institutional) and interpersonal—and we embrace the words of our President Freeman Hrabowski and Provost Phillip Rous that we share here.
A report just published by AcademyHealth has released the findings of a study conducted by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and The Hilltop Institute at UMBC that examined the experience with §1115 waivers for substance use disorder (SUD) treatment in Maryland and Virginia.
The Hilltop Institute at UMBC, with its partners ServBeyond Solutions and A-G Associates, has just been awarded a $2 million contract from the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission (HSCRC) to develop a multi-payer claims analytic tool (MCAT).
Hilltop Executive Director Cynthia Woodcock joined Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Professor Peter Cunningham in an AcademyHealth blog post to discuss the findings of the VCU/Hilltop study that examined the experience with §1115 waivers for substance use disorder (SUD) treatment in Maryland and Virginia.
The Hilltop Institute at UMBC, in partnership with the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s (UMB SOM’s) Department of Emergency Medicine, has just received funding to develop and test a measure of hospital quality that assesses hospitals based on the frequency of downstream clinically relevant readmissions (DCRR) as opposed to blanket 30-day all-cause readmissions.
Hilltop Senior Policy Analyst Charles Betley, MA, helped organize and participated on a panel titled Tobacco Costs: Present and Future Measurements and Effects at the 2019 Fall Research Conference of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) held in Denver, Colorado November 7-9, 2019. The panel discussed three papers that used different methods to examine the consequences of smoking and how high cigarette taxes are causing a rise in e-cigarette use. The findings from these studies offered new and timely information that can directly inform policymakers.
In his presentation, titled Estimating the Costs to Mississippi Medicaid Attributable to Tobacco, Betley talked about how policy studies are judged, based on both policymakers’ interests and researchers’ scientific directive. He then discussed the innovative methodology of the study: the use of state Medicaid claims data to estimate the costs of tobacco use to a state Medicaid program. Findings gleaned by this methodology are more timely and accurate than the use of national estimates alone.
Other panel participants were Conor J. Lennon, PhD, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Louisville, who presented a paper titled Paying for the Medical Costs of Smoking: New Evidence from the Employer Mandate and Catherine Maclean, PhD, Associate Professor of Economics at Temple University, who presented a paper titled The Effect of e-Cigarette Taxes on Tobacco Product Use among Adults.