Whole Person Care program successfully navigated around COVID-19 challenges in 2020
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Series Title(s):
- Health policy brief (UCLA Center for Health Policy Research)
- Author(s):
- Pourat, Nedereh, author O'Masta, Brenna, author Haley, Leigh Ann, author Zhou, Weihao, author Chuang, Emmeline, author
- Contributor(s):
- UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, issuing body.
- Publication:
- Los Angeles, CA : UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, January 2022
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- COVID-19 Delivery of Health Care, Integrated Medicaid -- trends Facilities and Services Utilization -- trends Pilot Projects California United States
- Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- California implemented the Whole Person Care (WPC) Pilot program under "Medi-Cal 2020," a Section 1115 Medicaid Waiver program designed to coordinate the care of high-utilizing Medi-Cal beneficiaries across medical, behavioral health, and social service sectors. The COVID-19 pandemic stay-at-home orders began in mid-March 2020, during the last year of WPC implementation, and disrupted California's plans to transition WPC enrollees into a new program under the California Advancing and Innovating Medi Cal (CalAIM) initiative. In this policy brief, we examine the impact of the pandemic on WPC implementation, enrollment, and health service utilization. We found that all WPC Pilots reported at least some pandemic-related alterations to WPC implementation. Total enrollment increased in 2020, with lower rates of new enrollment and disenrollment. The mid-March shutdown also resulted in an initial decline in enrollee health service utilization. However, by the end of 2020, primary care and specialty services had reverted to pre-pandemic patterns, while emergency department and hospitalization rates remained lower than pre-pandemic rates. In this policy brief, we discuss the implications of these findings for the transition to CalAIM and WPC evaluation.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY license. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (7 pages, 1 unnumbered page))
- Illustrations:
- Illustrations
- NLM Unique ID:
- 9918351289006676 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918351289006676