Oregon’s current five year 1115 demonstration waiver will end June 30, 2017. Under the waiver, Coordinated Care Organizations (CCO) now deliver physical, oral, and behavioral health services to Oregon Health Plan www.oregon.gov/OHA/healthplan/Pages/index.aspx members.
The waiver would create a new five year pilot program “Coordinated Health Partnerships” (CHP) http://coordinatedhealth.com/coordinated-health/associates to fund homelessness prevention, care coordination, and support housing services to at-risk adults and families. The pilots expect to be available by mid-2018.
The CHPs would be in place to increase collaboration and coordination among CCOs, local hospitals, community-based organizations, tribal governments, Indian health providers, housing authorities, county governments, public health agencies, and behavioral health providers.
In general, the pilots will address local housing needs, reduce inappropriate emergency department use, inpatient use, and residential treatment facility utilization. The pilots would increase access to primary care, and improve data collection and sharing to support ongoing case management, monitoring, and other improvements.
The Oregon Health Authority www.oregon.gov/oha/Pages/index.aspx proposes supporting the HIT component of the CHP program by ensuring that the data sharing and tools to support data exchange between social services and medical providers are made available. Also, notifications on transitions in and out of the corrections system, the State hospital, and housing services would be made available.
In addition, CHP’s in addition to helping individuals be successful in their housing transitions and arrangements, care coordination services provided with medical homes would provide behavioral health, and SUD providers.
The waiver also supports pilots to explore innovations in telehealth and mobile health for consumers and providers. Results from the pilots will be shared and may provide enough evidence to warrant sustainable funding from CCOs and other entities.
Oregon is in the process of amending and renewing the waiver for another five years. A draft document has been available for public input since May and is dependent on CMS approval. However, the waiver renewal request could change significantly before the final agreement is negotiated.