Planning for the end of the public health emergency: We can’t afford to get it wrong
With millions of lives on the line, now is the time to start preparing.
As everyone knows, the end of the public health emergency (PHE) is a moving target, with the current order set to expire on July 15. Because the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said they would provide states with 60 days’ notice, all eyes are on May 16. If they don’t give notice that day, chances are another extension will be issued on July 15.
Now isn’t the time to wait and see what happens.
There are 15 million Managed Medicaid lives on the line. And while that’s an easy number to throw around, the fact is these are real people. They are our family, our friends, our neighbors, and they are struggling. We have to get this right for them.
So, let’s start getting the work done now.
Our Founder and CEO Abner Mason recently discussed proactive steps plans can take to prepare for the end of the PHE with Andrea Maresca, principal at HMA, and Bill Snyder, principal at Leavitt Partners.
Andrea offered three main points as a starting place:
Take inventory, understand the state’s plan, and develop your plan.
Implement outreach and assistance plans to minimize coverage losses for your members.
Monitor the effectiveness of your strategies and continuously assess, review and revise.
For the longer term, Bill encouraged plans to think about how they will permanently incorporate successful strategies and have a “parking lot” to examine lessons learned.
Both emphasized the importance of working collaboratively, not just with the states, but also other plans.
“Now is the time to think outside the box. We’ve never seen this much flexibility in policy and processes. We should take advantage of it and prove that new ways of doing things may indeed be better ways.”
There are five steps SameSky Health can help plans to take now to implement outreach and assist members:
Get the right member contact information.
Leverage the use of text messaging to more effectively reach your members.
Know and understand your members’ needs around SDOH and other factors.
Support members through the redetermination process.
Help keep members covered that will need to find new benefit coverage options through the Marketplace.
Learn more:
Watch to the full webinar here.
Contact SameSky Health to start putting your member outreach plan together.