Medicaid Pediatric Healthcare Recovery Program Results
In 2022, disruptions caused by COVID-19 continued to persist and create barriers to essential preventive healthcare services. Therefore, the Medicaid Pediatric Healthcare Recovery Program provided another round of payments to pediatric and family medicine practices. Payments were contingent on practices meeting well-child visit targets and participating in learning sessions related to developmental, psychosocial, and behavioral health screening. All practices enrolled in the program met their well-child targets resulting in 38,000 Medicaid children (primary coverage) receiving well-child visits from July 1, 2021 – June 30, 2022. In addition, all of the practices enrolled in the program participated in the behavioral health learning sessions and 11 practices took advantage of the customized practice-specific behavioral health technical assistance. Recordings, presentations and evaluation forms can be found here. Practices received practice facilitation support, which consisted of focused discussions on well-child visits, measurement specifications, Immunization (including COVID) and lead screening performance results, as well as practice needs around responding to behavioral health concerns. As a group, childhood immunizations (including lead screenings) improved across all categories. See graph below for performance overtime. This project resulted in $7.3 million paid to pediatric and family medicine practices.
Because COVID continues to impact practices and patient care, the State FY23 budget included additional funding for the Medicaid Pediatric Healthcare Recovery Program. Medicaid, in partnership with CTC-RI, will be offering an extended 12-month incentive program to improve immunization and lead screening results. Payments will be contingent on practices meeting immunization and lead screening targets or demonstrating prescribed improvement. In addition, practices will be paid to participate in a 6 ECHO Behavioral Health Learning Initiative. More information coming next month.