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The Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) is accepting comments on its California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal (CalAIM) initiative proposal, the state’s multi-year initiative to redesign the Medi-Cal delivery system. Comments are due by Dec. 16.
With the state’s current Section 1115 and 1915(b) waivers expiring in 2020, DHCS developed the CalAIM initiative to set the course for broad delivery system, program, and payment reform across the Medi-Cal program.
CalAIM advances several key priorities of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration by leveraging Medi-Cal as a tool to help address many of the complex challenges facing California’s most vulnerable residents, such as homelessness, insufficient behavioral health care access, children with complex medical conditions, the growing number of justice-involved populations who have significant clinical needs, and the state’s aging population.
CalAIM recognizes the opportunity to provide non-clinical interventions focused on a population health and whole person care approach that targets the social determinants of health, reducing health disparities and inequities to improve health outcomes for all Californians. DHCS will work with stakeholders to finalize the details of the CalAIM initiative in the coming months.
Ultimately, implementing CalAIM proposals will depend on funding approvals from both the federal and state levels.
DHCS has established five topic-specific stakeholder workgroups to discuss individual sections of the proposal starting in November and continuing through February 2020. The workgroup schedule can be found here.
In order to incorporate comments into future CalAIM workgroups and engage in early discussions with stakeholders, DHCS is soliciting comments by Dec. 16. Although DHCS will continue to accept comments until Feb. 29, 2020, comments received after the Dec. 16 deadline may not be incorporated into CalAIM workgroup discussions. Comments on the proposal can be submitted to CalAIM@dhcs.ca.gov.
CHA will engage members in providing feedback to DHCS on its proposal to redesign the Medi-Cal program and will include updates via CHA News.
