February 5, 2024

On Friday evening I spent some time talking to Hillel Hirschbein, Director of the NYS Health Home (HH) Program at the Department of Health/OHIP.   Hillel was interested in my feedback regarding the information (attached).  Note:  The data only relates to Adult Health Homes (21+) however, Governor Hochul’s executive budget proposal includes a significant reduction in funding that would impact DoH regulated Health Homes to include child and adult programs. 
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Below, Hilell summarizes what’s in the document we walked through on Friday:

The document contains demographic and other descriptive data pertaining to the adult (21+) enrolled Health Home population (HH population). In most cases the data are provided separately for “Duals” (meaning people who have Medicaid and Medicare) and for “Non-Duals” (meaning people who have Medicaid Only).

The file contains data on age, race/ethnicity, and geographic distribution of the HH population as compared to the adult (21+) Medicaid recipient population (Medicaid population). It also describes disease burden in 10 major categories as compared to the Medicaid population and provides information on which 10 pharmaceutical categories are the greatest contributors to the pharmacy spend associated with the HH population.  The file further contains data on 22 NCQA performance measures comparing the HH population vs Medicaid population. (Note: These are for Non-Duals only).

Finally, the file includes a “pre-post” analysis of Medical Service utilization data on a cohort of New Yorkers who were enrolled in Medicaid before HH enrollment, and then had at least 9 months of HH enrollment. While cost of care could not be released, the % change in cost of utilization based on the actual cost of care is presented for the cohort, with the statewide % change as comparison.
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