Thank you to the more than 1,000 individuals who registered for the HCPF Annual Stakeholder Webinar on July 19. To those of you who were not able to attend, we started the webinar with a grounding of who we serve via a powerful member video, reviewed shared accomplishments as well as the challenges and opportunities before us, and then dove into the related details through individual HCPF Office Director presentations. Webinar materials are posted online for your convenience. As we embark on this new state fiscal year, below are a few highlights of the Department's transformational priorities, which were framed through stakeholder engagement.

Coverage Continuity and Operational Investments. The public health emergency (PHE) was recently extended by the federal government through at least Oct. 13. Though the Department believes that the PHE will be extended again, we have been actively executing on a number of initiatives intended to propel coverage continuity, improve the member experience, reduce eligible but not enrolled Coloradans, and address county workload challenges. We have already communicated that we will be leveraging the 14 months offered by HHS to redetermine our current enrollees once the PHE ends. In addition, we are innovating to make our Health First Colorado and Child Health Plan Plus application renewal process as easy as possible, including increasing our automation capabilities. As a result, during the last few months, about 35% of our member renewals (we have continued to process renewals through the PHE) didn’t require any action on the part of the member or the county worker. And for a subset of our MAGI members, as many as 77% didn’t require any member or worker action – an incredible accomplishment! Another initiative intended to achieve those shared goals is the waiving of CHP+ premiums as approved by the General Assembly this past legislative session. That enables the auto-enrollment of children who qualify for CHP+ but no longer qualify for Health First Colorado at the end of the PHE. In the same spirit, we are also working closely with Connect for Health Colorado to improve awareness of coverage programs and the financial assistance available for Health First Colorado, CHP+ and commercial coverage through the subsidies available through Connect for Health Colorado. On this last matter, we are actively monitoring the current congressional discussion and action. 

Health Equity. While the Department is working hard to apply a health equity lens across all our programs and initiatives, we have identified four initial Health First Colorado health disparity areas of focus, including: COVID-19 vaccination rates (currently a 28-pt Health First Colorado uptake disparity measured against all Coloradans), maternal care (HCPF covered 43% of the state’s births last year), behavioral health and prevention. You can read more about this in HCPF’s Health Equity Plan at CO.gov/HCPF/health-equity. Concurrent with that submission, effective July 1, health equity plan requirements are now part of each Regional Accountable Entity and Managed Care Entity contract. This important lever is foundational in achieving desired health outcomes as well as decreasing disparities for our members. In addition to targeted interventions to population needs and health priorities, listening to the lived experiences of our members and shoring up our data collection will help guide the Department’s decisions and innovations to improve quality of care. Please stay tuned for our second report on Health First Colorado maternal health disparities, expected in the coming weeks.

Affordability. We took a poll during our July HCPF Stakeholder webinar which indicated that 29% of the attendees felt that saving Coloradans money on health care should be our top priority of our six pillars (Member Health, Medicaid Cost Control, Care Access, Customer Service & Operational Excellence, Helping HCPF Employees Thrive, Affordability for All Coloradans). This aligns directly with the COVID-induced inflationary challenges presenting across the globe, our shared focus on saving Coloradans money on health care, and HCPF’s modernized mission. To drive impactful affordability transformation, we continue to prioritize value based payments in primary care, maternity care and hospital care to reward improved access to quality care, health equity and cost control. We will also be furthering hospital price transparency compliance with federal and state requirements over the coming months. Our work will help commercial consumers, employers and health plans utilize transparent pricing information to have productive affordability conversations with local hospitals on their prices compared to others for specific services.

Other Transformational Investments. In addition to the above, HCPF continues to invest in transformational projects, including:

The Department has released its first ever in-depth analysis on emergency department (ED) utilization. Topics include which members use the ED most often and why, the impact COVID-19 has had on the ED, opportunities for improving the health care safety net, and spotlights on behavioral health and housing issues. The Department maintains an internal data dashboard on ED utilization and will continue to monitor trends over time.

The email address for Action Review Group (ARG) disability application submissions changed July 1.

All disability applications need to be submitted to ARGcoloradoapps@rescare.com. ARG

remains the state's contractor for disability applications; the submission email address is the only thing that has changed.

For more information, contact Lisa.Sterling@state.co.us.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has a new COVID-19 vaccine communications toolkit for pediatricians and family physicians to encourage vaccination, including new, culturally sensitive and Spanish language materials and social media, texts, fact sheets and videos.

The purpose of this toolkit is to provide our community partners, stakeholders, and advocates with messaging and resources to encourage Health First Colorado and Child Health Plan Plus (CHP+) members to update their contact information. This toolkit is particularly important to prepare members for upcoming updates to the renewal process for Health First Colorado.

This toolkit was a collaborative effort among the Department of Health Care Policy & Financing and advocates, with review and input from Health First Colorado and CHP+ members. Partners using this toolkit may modify the language to fit their specific communication vehicles; however, the messaging in these resources should remain the same to ensure consistency.