Influencing Medicaid Managed Care and Other Payer Contracts: Musings from a Former Medicaid Director

Beth Waldman, J.D., M.P.H., senior consultant at Bailit Health and former Massachusetts Medicaid director, presents the key priorities of Medicaid agencies and their MCOs. Drawing on her extensive experience working with Medicaid programs across the country, she shares strategies for state primary care associations and behavioral health associations and their members on how to best engage with state Medicaid agencies and their MCO partners.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the key priorities of Medicaid agencies and their MCOs and consider how to frame safety-net needs to align with those objectives
• Learn how best to engage Medicaid programs and their MCOs (e.g., use of data and evidence rather than anecdotes)

Speaker:

Beth Waldman, J.D., M.P.H., joined Bailit Health Purchasing as a Senior Consultant in January 2007, and previously served as Massachusetts’s Medicaid Director. Beth’s expertise is in health care policy, program development and implementation, specializing in Medicaid and SCHIP programs and coverage for the uninsured. Since joining Bailit, Beth has been actively involved in efforts across the country to improve access and delivery of health care to low–income individuals while working to make coverage more affordable and assist payers in efforts to expand value–based purchasing. Her work includes assisting states and other stakeholders in delivery system and payment reform design, including ACO development; care management and health home program design; behavioral health reform, including integration, opiate prevention and treatment; design and implementation of Medicaid and other public program expansions; quality measurement; managed care procurements; and long term services and supports strategy and integration.