A task force has delivered its report on how to establish a medical home pilot project for Florida Medicaid, a step mandated in 2009 by the state legislature as a prelude to it passing a bill later this year to formally launch the pilot.
The pilot is seen by its supporters as an important step to reducing Medicaid expenses in Florida. It was originally seen as an alternative to a Medicaid reform project championed by former Florida Agency for Health Care Administration secretary Holly Benson which relied mainly on HMOs to provide Medicaid services.
Benson resigned in October last year, and is running to be the state's attorney general. Her replacement is Tom Arnold, a career public servant and a former Medicaid director at AHCA.
In a patient-centered medical home (PCMH) model, a primary care physician or team would be responsible for coordinating fee-for-service care using organizations such as community-based networks and other providers.
The concept is decades old, but has been gathering steam over the past few years, due in large part to advances in health IT that allow closer and more continuous contact between patients and physician practices and caregivers.
Several states, such as North Carolina and Oklahoma, have already launched Medicaid medical home programs, and a number of others have started their own pilots.
Florida Rep. Ed Homan, an orthopedic surgeon and chair of the House Health and Family Services Policy Council, told the task force late last year that the experience of states which have already started medical home program showed that, "by every parameter the patients are getting better and more timely care and the result has been that healthier patients save money in the Medicaid programs of those states with the Medical Home model of care."
The task force recommended using the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) standards for PCMH in selecting components for the pilot. It also said that health provider payments will need to cover increased health IT costs, though at least some of those should be offset by investments the state is already making in health IT.
The Florida legislature is currently in its committee period, during which a bill that will include the medical home pilot is expected to be considered and reported out. The legislature then begins its regular 60-day, 2010 session on March 2.
