Off to Capitol Hill: Catalyst Center director helps make the case for Medicaid for kids

Fundamentals of How Medicaid Works for Kids
Wednesday, Jan. 25 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. ET
Capitol Visitors’ Center, Room HVC-201

Meg Comeau, director of the Catalyst Center, is headed to Washington DC next week to participate in the first of a four-part series of briefings for congressional staff on the Fundamentals of How Medicaid Works for Kids. The briefing will focus on the importance of Medicaid for children and how Medicaid has worked to keep kids covered in a tough economic climate. Meg will discuss the critical role Medicaid plays in the lives of families of children with special health care needs.

The series is sponsored by the Children’s Hospital Association (formerly the National Association of Children’s Hospitals), American Academy of Pediatrics, Family Voices, First Focus, Georgetown Center for Children and Families, and March of Dimes in collaboration with the Congressional Children’s Health Care Caucus.

For more information, please visit http://tinyurl.com/MedicaidMattersForKids

Top Ten Catalyst Center Resources for 2011

As in previous years, Catalyst Center  staff continued to research issues and provide information about improving financing of care for children and youth with special health care needs (CYSHCN).  The Catalyst Center’s top ten resources for 2011 include:

1. State-at-a-Glance Chartbook
   The announcement in September of our new and improved chartbook, with updated data and several new indicators, caused the highest spike in traffic to our website in 2011. The chartbook includes data from a variety of respected sources and provides data about coverage and financing of care for CYSHCN for each state, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The increased number of visitors to the chartbook shows that this is an important tool to help you make the case for CYSHCN in your state.

2. State Financing Strategies:  Cover more kids, Close Benefit Gaps, Pay for Additional Services, Build Capacity
   We redesigned our website in 2010 to showcase innovative, effective state programs for improving financing and coverage of care for CYSHCN. In 2011, we updated this section to reflect new information gathered in our 2010 surveys of state Title V and Medicaid programs and family leadership organizations. The most popular destinations were TEFRA and TEFRA Look Alike Programs, Medicaid Buy-in  (with its associated Texas Case Study), Mandated Benefits, Integrated Care for Children with Specific Diagnoses, and Premium Assistance.

3. Health Care Reform: the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Children with Special Health Care Needs
   This roundup page on our website contains a list of resources developed in 2011 to help stakeholders understand the details of ACA and what it may mean for CYSHCN and their families.  Included among these are:

   • An Analysis and Steps for State Policymakers (PDF), a paper developed by the National Academy for State Health Policy(NASHP) for the Catalyst Center
   • A companion webcast outlining the highlights from the above analysis
   • The Affordable Care Act: A Side-by-Side Comparison of Major Provisions and The Implications for Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs (PDF)

4. Week in Review email news roundup (Past issues for 2011)
   In keeping with our 2010 new year’s resolution to stay current with news related to health care reform (see #3 above) and more, we sent out a weekly (well, mostly weekly) email roundup of news related to coverage and financing of care for children and youth with special health care needs. Some of the year’s most popular articles included:

   • HRSA awards $3.4 million for children and youth with special health care needs (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services)
   • Medicaid and CHIP: Reports for monitoring children’s health care services needs improvement (U.S. Government Accountability Office)
   • Grading Docs with Electronic Medical Records (Kaiser Health News)
   • 10 Reasons Why Health Reform Would Harm Children (Huffington Post)

5. Catalyst Center Coverage (Past issues of Coverage)
   This quarterly eNewsletter includes original articles from the Catalyst Center, announcements, resources, analysis, news items, and more.  Featured articles included:

   • Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Project (PDF)
   • What’s the Deal with Maintenance of Effort (MOE)? (PDF)
   •  Financing Pediatric Palliative and Hospice Care Programs (PDF)
   •  A Spotlight on the Special Health Care Needs of Children in Foster Care
   • Children in Foster Care Are Children with Special Health Care Needs (PDF)

6. Family stories
   First initiated for the development of our Breaking the Link publication, which addresses financial hardship among families of CYSHCN,  family stories have become one of the most visited sections of our website. The most recent story about the Paxton family’s challenges related to  coverage of their son’s cochlear implants was featured in the Fall 2011 issue of Catalyst Center Coverage.

7. Catalyst Center Video
   This two-minute video introducing the work of the Catalyst Center has been a big hit at meetings and on our homepage.

8. Webinar: Children and the Medicaid Health Home State Plan Option
   In early December, the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs (AMCHP) and the Catalyst Center co-hosted a webcast on the health home provision (Section 2703) of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). More than 200 people participated in the live webinar, which was recorded and is available on the Catalyst Center website.

9. The Spark Catalyst Center Blog and White House Meeting Digital Story
   On July 7, 2011, three families of children with special health care needs met with senior officials at the White House to talk about the importance of Medicaid in their lives.  Meg Comeau attended this meeting, not in her role as Catalyst Center Director; she was there because she is the parent of a young adult with a complex genetic disorder.  We set up this blog to report about the meeting and other issues related to coverage and financing of care for children with special health care needs—like this post you’re reading, for example. In her free time, Edi Ablavsky, Catalyst Center Communication Specialist, interviewed the families who attended the White House meeting and put together a digital story about their visit.

10. Social Media: Facebook page (and Twitter)
    Early in 2011, the Catalyst Center set up a Facebook page and Twitter site to help us keep in touch with our partners and friends.  It has been a great way to share our news and hear about your news. We also post timely news items related to the coverage and financing of care for kids with special health care needs that may not be of national interest, but is relevant to a particular state, region, or group of people.  We also put a toe in the twitter waters by following our partners and tweeting  news we want to share.

So please:  Write on our wall, follow us on twitter, or just pick up the phone and talk to us (617-638-1935) so we’ll know what you need for 2012!