This report describes the services The Hilltop Institute provided to the Maryland Department of Health (the Department) under the Master Agreement between Hilltop and the Department. The report covers fiscal year (FY) 2021 (July 1, 2020, through June 30, 2021). Hilltop’s interdisciplinary staff provided a wide range of services, including Medicaid program development and policy analysis; HealthChoice program support, evaluation, and financial analysis; long-term services and supports program development, policy analysis, and financial analytics; and data management and web-accessible database development.
In this report, Hilltop discusses the findings of its empirical studies to identify the need for developing a health information exchange solution to bridge the information gap during transitions between LTSS and acute care settings among the population of over 100,000 individuals who are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid in the state of Maryland.
Intentional injury (both self-harm and interpersonal) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality, yet there are little data on the per-person cost of caring for these patients. The Affordable Care Act has made Medicaid the primary payor of intentional injury care (39%) in the United States and the ideal source of cost data for these patients. This study sought to determine the total and per-person long-term cost of intentional injury among Maryland Medicaid recipients.
Senior Director of Research and Analytics/Chief Data Scientist Ian Stockwell, PhD co-authored this article published in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery.
Senior Director of Research and Analytics/Chief Data Scientist Ian Stockwell, PhD, and Principal Data Scientists Morgan Henderson, PhD, and Fei Han, PhD were co-authors of this article published in Health Services Research (Volume 57, Issue 1).
Enacted in 2010, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) gave states the option to expand their Medicaid programs by extending eligibility to almost all adults under age 65 with income below 138% of the federal poverty level (FPL). As of December 2021, Mississippi was 1 of 12 states that has not expanded its Medicaid program. In order to provide state policymakers with the latest available evidence on the potential impact of Medicaid expansion, the Center for Mississippi Health Policy commissioned The Hilltop Institute to conduct a study on the likely effects of Medicaid expansion on Mississippi’s Medicaid program, state budget, wider economy, and providers. This report provides a summary of the study findings. A more detailed technical report is also available.
Enacted in 2010, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) gave states the option to expand their Medicaid programs by extending eligibility to almost all adults under age 65 with income below 138% of the federal poverty level (FPL). As of December 2021, Mississippi was 1 of 12 states that has not expanded its Medicaid program. In order to provide state policymakers with the latest available evidence on the potential impact of Medicaid expansion, the Center for Mississippi Health Policy commissioned The Hilltop Institute to conduct a study on the likely effects of Medicaid expansion on Mississippi’s Medicaid program, state budget, wider economy, and providers. This technical report presents the findings of this study in full detail. A summary report is also available.
Pursuant to Maryland Health-General §15-103.5 and Insurance Article §19-807(d)(2), the Maryland Department of Health (MDH) submits an annual report to the Governor and various House and Senate committees addressing the progress of the rate-setting process; a comparison of Maryland Medicaid’s reimbursement rates with those of other states; the schedule for adjusting Maryland’s reimbursement rates; and the estimated costs of implementing the above schedule and proposed changes to the fee-for-service reimbursement rates. This report, dated January 2022, satisfies these requirements for fiscal year 2021.
This annual report, written for the UMBC community, provides an overview of key projects and staff accomplishments for FYs 2020 and 2021.
Emergency department (ED) care coordination plays an important role in facilitating care transitions across settings. This study addresses ED care coordination processes and their perceived effectiveness in Maryland hospitals, which face strong incentives to reduce hospital-based care through global budgets.
Hilltop Executive Director Cynthia Woodcock was co-author of this article published in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine.
In 1997, Maryland implemented HealthChoice—a statewide mandatory Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) managed care program—under authority of a waiver through §1115 of the Social Security Act. The provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that went into effect in 2014 marked another milestone by extending quality coverage to many more Marylanders with low income by calendar year (CY) 2018. Over 20 years after its launch, HealthChoice covered close to 90 percent of the state’s Medicaid and Maryland Children’s Health Program (MCHP) populations.
The Hilltop Institute, on behalf of the Maryland Department of Health (the Department), evaluates the program annually; this evaluation covers the period from CY 2015 through CY 2019.