New Orleans Redux: Health Reform Resources from NASHP’s Annual Conference
NASHP’s 23rd Annual State Health Policy Conference took place in New Orleans, Louisiana last week. For those of you who missed it, the conference sessions offered a wealth of information about how states are approaching health reform implementation. On State Refor(u)m, we’ve compiled some of the conference session presentations that may be most helpful for your implementation work. You can find links to these presentations below.
We also had the opportunity to interview some of your peer state health officials involved in health reform implementation. We asked them to discuss key tasks and challenges of implementation, good ideas they’ve received from other states, and how the federal government can best support states with implementation. We compiled these interviews into a short video that you can watch directly on www.statereforum.org. We hope you enjoy it!
NASHP Conference Presentations
Health Insurance Exchanges
- A presentation by Sandra Shewry on California’s recently passed health insurance exchange legislation, which covered issues other states might consider, such as purpose, governance, and authorities and tools.
Commercial Insurance Regulation
- Rhode Island’s Chris Koller summarized the key private insurance requirements in the ACA, why they have implications for Medicaid and other public programs, and a discussion followed with MaryBeth Senkewicz from Florida and Christine Barber from Community Catalyst about some of the key issues for states.
Integrating Eligibility Systems and Coordinating Enrollment
- Andy Allison spoke about Kansas’s plans around their new eligibility system, and identified outstanding Medicaid and exchange coordination issues that must be resolved by both the federal government and the state.
- Richard Evans from Oklahoma’s SoonerCare program (Medicaid) discussed the state’s efforts around online enrollment for health programs.
- Deborah Bachrach presented on New York’s approach to coordinating enrollment between Medicaid and the health insurance exchange. She also identified key eligibility and coverage issues for the state.
- Jim Jones discussed Wisconsin’s enrollment experiences with BadgerCare Plus and implications for health reform, including Wisconsin’s plans for the exchange.
- Denise Hewson discussed how North Carolina is coordinating care for dual eligibles.
Provider and Health System Capacity
- Julia Dyck presented from the primary care perspective on health workforce issues in Massachusetts following the state’s health reform initiative.
- Lisa Dulsky Watkins presented on Vermont’s Blueprint for Health, a program seeking to improve the state’s health care delivery system. The model of multi-insurer payment reforms is based on using multi-disciplinary community health teams to deliver care.
We hope you’ll find these resources helpful. As always, please share your state’s health reform resources with us by sending them to statereforum@oldsite.nashp.org.
For individuals living with complex, often chronic conditions, and their families, palliative care can provide relief from symptoms, improve satisfaction and outcomes, and help address critical mental and spiritual needs during difficult times. Now more than ever, there is growing recognition of the importance of palliative care services for individuals with serious illness, such as advance care planning, pain and symptom management, care coordination, and team-based, multi-disciplinary support. These services can help patients and families cope with the symptoms and stressors of disease, better anticipate and avoid crises, and reduce unnecessary and/or unwanted care. While this model is grounded in evidence that demonstrates improved quality of life, better outcomes, and reduced cost for patients, only a fraction of individuals who could benefit from palliative care receive it. 
