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.
This annual report, written for the UMBC community, provides an overview of key projects and staff accomplishments for FYs 2020 and 2021.
With funding from the National Institutes on Drug Abuse (NIDA), Medicaid Outcomes Distributed Research Network (MODRN) members and AcademyHealth conducted key informant interviews with nine states to describe the roles that Medicaid programs have taken to address the opioid epidemic and their policy and operational decisions. Hilltop Chief of Staff Alice Middleton, JD, is a co-author of this AcademyHealth report, which presents the findings of this research.
State Medicaid programs are the largest single provider of healthcare for pregnant persons with opioid use disorder (OUD). The objective of this study was to provide comparable, multistate measures estimating the burden of OUD in pregnancy, medication for OUD (MOUD) in pregnancy, and related neonatal and child outcomes.
Senior Policy Analyst Shamis Mohamoud was part of the Medicaid Outcomes Distributed Research Network (MODRN) team of authors of this article published in the Journal of Addiction Medicine.
As the Medicaid Outcomes Distributed Research Network (MODRN) research partner for Maryland, Hilltop co-authored this JAMA article, which concluded that, among Medicaid enrollees in 11 states, the prevalence of medication use for treatment of opioid use disorder increased from 2014 through 2018. Senior policy analyst Shamis Mohamoud, MA, was Hilltop’s main contributor.
This report is an update to the 2018 Health Home Evaluation Report and the 2015 Joint Chairmen’s Report on Patient Outcomes for Participants in Health Homes. Its purpose is to describe the characteristics and outcomes of participants in the Maryland Health Home program. The Maryland Health Home program for individuals with chronic conditions builds on statewide efforts to integrate somatic and behavioral health services.
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) 2020 (July 1, 2019, through June 30, 2020). 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 response to the nation’s opioid epidemic, an increasing number of states are applying for and receiving Medicaid Section 1115 demonstration waivers for substance use disorders. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) created this opportunity under the authority of section 1115(a) of the Social Security Act for states to draw down federal Medicaid payments for facilities with greater than 16 beds that provide short-term residential treatment, which are otherwise prohibited through the Institution for Mental Disease (IMD) exclusion. Waiving the IMD exclusion allows states to offer short-term residential treatment, thereby offering the entire continuum of addiction treatment services to their Medicaid members based on widely accepted standards for evidence-based care.
This research was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Research in Transforming Health and Health Care Systems program, which is administered by AcademyHealth. Hilltoppers Cynthia Woodcock, Alice Middleton, David Idala, and Matthew Clark co-authored this report, which describes the experiences of two early adopters of IMD waivers, Maryland and Virginia, in terms of their implementation and impact on the addiction treatment system for Medicaid members.
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) 2019 (July 1, 2018, through June 30, 2019). 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.
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. In his presentation, 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.