December 19, 2024
Attached please find two docs:
1) Meeting notes and slides presented by HMA consultants Josh Rubin and Cara Henley to a group of Medicaid Matters advocates who are continuing to educate themselves re: what may be in store for the (federal) Medicaid program in the days to come.
2) The entire slide deck from the PowerPoint presentation. Just the slides – no conversational notes from the meeting.
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The New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) has announced the availability of funds for the development of 11 new Youth Assertive Community Treatment teams throughout the State. Youth ACT teams are designed to address the significant needs of children ages 10 up to 21, who are at risk of entering, or returning home from high intensity services, such as inpatient settings or residential services. Interventions are focused on enhancing family functioning to foster health and well-being, stability, and re-integration for the child and youth. Youth ACT teams deliver intensive, highly coordinated, individualized services and skilled therapeutic interventions through an integrated, multi-disciplinary team approach to better achieve success and maintain the child in the home, school, and community.
The Request For Proposal can be found at: https://omh.ny.gov/omhweb/rfp/2024/youth-act/index.html. Proposals must be submitted by the date and time posted within this RFP.
All questions must be submitted through the Issuing Officer as identified in the RFP.
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The New York State Office of Mental Health’s Division of Integrated Community Services for Children and Families is pleased to announce a procurement opportunity for an organization to coordinate training for Youth Mental Health First Aid and Teen Mental Health in each of the state’s 10 Economic Development regions. This award is for $2 million annually over five years, for a total of $10 million. The goal is to train up to 10,000 individuals and certify up to 400 new instructors annually. The Request for Application can be accessed on OMH’s website under Procurement Opportunities at: https://omh.ny.gov/omhweb/rfp/2024/youth-teen-mental-health/index.html
All applications must be completed and submitted through the Statewide Financial System.
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What to know about the first [state-sanctioned] overdose prevention center in the U.S., from the researchers studying it — Today the National Harm Reduction Coalition wrote about Rhode Island’s overdose prevention center (OPC), the first state-sanctioned program in the country. As noted in this Brown University coverage, “There are approximately 200 OPCs operating in more than 14 countries around the world. The first opened in Switzerland in the 1980s, so they are not a new intervention globally. Studies consistently show substantial public health benefits: for example, one study from France showed an almost 60% reduction in emergency department visits among people who used an OPC compared to people who use other harm reduction programs. And in 2011 the Lancet published results of a study in Canada that demonstrated a 35% reduction in overdose mortality in the immediate vicinity of an OPC after it opened in Vancouver, Canada.”
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National Organizations Urge the White House to Lift the Contingency Management Funding Cap Last week, the Addiction Policy Forum joined the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry (AAAP), the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM), the National Council on Mental Wellbeing, and other national organizations in sending a letter to the administration to lift the current $75 max restriction on many federal grant programs on patient incentives for recovery behaviors or Contingency Management (CM) from opioid, stimulant, and alcohol use disorders.The letter states: “The current $75 cap policy contradicts over six decades of scientific research supporting the efficacy of higher incentives. It also fails to recognize the legality of higher incentive amounts, given an Advisory Opinion from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG), which allows for up to $599 per patient per year.” Given the severity of the addiction epidemic and the strong scientific foundation for Contingency Management, APF joined other national leaders in urging the administration to increase the patient incentive cap to enhance treatment recovery outcomes. Contingency management involves giving tangible rewards to individuals to support positive behavior change and has been found to be effective in treating SUDs. In this therapy, patients receive a gift card or voucher when they exhibit desired behavior, such as drug-free urine tests or participation in treatment activities. Clinical studies have shown that contingency management results in better treatment engagement for patients and longer periods of abstinence. Studies have shown effectiveness for individuals with cocaine use disorder, as well as those struggling with alcohol, opioid, and methamphetamine use disorders. Contingency management may be combined with other therapies or treatment components like CBT. For more information on contingency management, click here The first few weeks of the next Trump administration will be busy ones for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which must work through a sizable catalog of policy priorities. President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming CMS team will need to tackle pending regulations, navigate new executive orders, lay a path for innovation and handle workaday agency operations to ensure the business of healthcare doesn’t grind to a halt. Here are some key items on the second Trump administration’s to-do list: Regulatory review As presidents including Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Trump himself did at the start of their administrations, the White House will likely issue a memorandum on Inauguration Day to suspend draft regulations that originated under Biden and to postpone final rules that aren’t yet in effect, said Kelly Cleary, a partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. From there, policymakers can handle regulations in a few ways. Proposed rules can be shelved or tweaked, Cleary said. The agency could also opt to craft new versions of draft regulations, although that would trigger a new 180-day notice-and-comment period. A key example is the Medicare Advantage and Part D proposed rule, through which CMS seeks Medicare and Medicaid coverage of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor, or GLP-1, drugs such as Ozempic to treat obesity.“ It does kick the can to the next administration and present them with some difficult questions to have to answer, because they’re going to have to own whatever they finalize,” Cleary said. Congress, which will be under Republican control next year, can block rules issued in the latter part of the year during the “lookback” period under the Congressional Review Act of 1996, which empowers lawmakers to overturn recent regulations. This year, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service estimates that would cover final rules published on or after Aug. 1, depending when Congress formally adjourns. Executive orders |