Here’s what’s happening in health in Rhode Island, Nov. 1:

  • OPEN ENROLLMENT: Today (Nov. 1) is the beginning of open enrollment for health insurance plans sold on the state’s Obamacare exchange, HealthSource RI.
  • PUBLIC HEALTH: Brown University’s School of Public Health will be losing Dean Terri Fox Wetle. She’s stepping down but intends to continue teaching and mentoring at Brown.

     

  • UHIP: The latest update: DHS has extended office hours at the Woonsocket field office Tuesdays and Wednesdays. They’re also open every Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Providence and Woonsocket field offices. The agency has also established an “escalation unit” of six people who will be dedicated to triage urgent individual cases when staff can’t complete an application via the regular route. Caseload backlogs continue to be high, but they’re chipping away at pending applications for aid such as Medicaid, cash assistance, etc. The agency reports it’s trying to manage wait times in the lobbies of field offices and improve call center response time.

     

  • BUDGET: It’s that time of year when state agencies testify before the House Finance Committee about how much they’re anticipating spending and earning over the coming months. It’s called the Caseload Estimating Conference. One of the biggest chunks of the state budget – with a big “caseload” of Rhode Islanders who receive services – is health and human services, weighing in at about $2.3 billion dollars. And here are the headlines from the Executive Office of Health and Human Services’ testimony.

    – The number of Medicaid enrollees continues to go up, but spending per enrollee has remained relatively flat. More than 280,000 Rhode Islanders are enrolled in Medicaid (that’s more than 1 in 4 of the state’s total population).

    – The agency reports a deficit, due in part to higher anticipated expenditures on Medicaid enrollees, because the population signing up may be sicker than average; higher average Medicaid enrollment; lower than anticipated savings from the new benefits system (UHIP) because of project delays; and an increase in Medicare premiums, some of which the state pays for people with low incomes.

    – Bottom line: progress is slow reining in this budget because more Rhode Islanders need Medicaid, initiatives to “reinvent” Medicaid or improve care and reduce costs are slow to take effect, and costs are going up.