State News

Black Ohioans make up about 13 percent of the state’s population but accounted for larger percentages of COVID-19 cases (22.8%), hospitalizations (30.6%) and deaths (18.7%), while white Ohioans make up about 82 percent of the state’s population, but accounted for smaller percentages of COVID-19 cases (53.1%), hospitalizations (56.9%) and deaths (77.5%), according to a new report from Health Policy Institute of Ohio. 

A $1.2 million grant from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration was awarded to fund a pilot program allowing paramedics to perform emergency care functions in order to improve healthcare access for rural citizens, reports Mainebiz. The grant will fund training for paramedics to perform urgent care skills under the direction of an emergency department via telemedicine, respond to acute 911 calls with local volunteer ambulance staff and pilot an emergency department physician consult program. The program works with community health centers in rural parts of the state to facilitate greater access to emergency services for Mainers who do not live near hospitals with emergency care services

California is poised to become the first state to develop its own line of generic drugs after the legislature overwhelmingly approved a measure directing the state’s top health agency to partner with drug companies to make or distribute a broad range of generic or biosimilar drugs that are cheaper than brand-name equivalents, reports Kaiser Health News. Though it could take years to successfully bring new generic products to the market, the move would put the state in direct competition with major generic and brand-name drug manufacturers that dominate the market, and potentially allow California to use its massive purchasing power to drive down drug prices.

Alaska ranked 32nd of 50 states and the District of Columbia on the Commonwealth Fund’s 2020 Scorecard on State Health System Performance, reports State of Reform. The state showed significant variation in its individual category measurements, ranking as high as 8th for avoidable hospital use and cost and almost last (48th) for prevention and treatment. Unmet mental health needs for adults and alcohol-related deaths have worsened in recent years, while breast cancer deaths and children who did not receive needed mental healthcare were the most improved indicators.

Hawaii’s healthcare system ranked the highest of all 50 states and the District of Columbia on the Commonwealth Fund’s 2020 Scorecard on State Health System Performance, according to State of Reform. The state was in the top 10 for all categories and placed first for avoidable hospital use and costs and healthy lives. Hawaii also performed well on prevention and treatment (#2) and access and affordability (#3). The lowest ranking was for measurements of disparity (#10) where the state has performed significantly poorer in recent years.

The Massachusetts Attorney General is launching a new grant program that aims to promote equity for treatment of opioid use disorder by supporting recovery programs in communities of color, reports the Boston Globe. The $1.5 million program is being funded by the recent settlement the state reached with an Andover mail-order pharmacy whose alleged actions fueled the opioid crisis in the state. The program will fund recovery and behavioral health services that are, “committed to standards that serve Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities,” in the state, with organizations based in the communities they serve getting priority. The program seeks to remove barriers to treatment that have systematically and disproportionately harmed such communities.

Young adults in Colorado, and millennials in particular, are more likely than Generation X or baby boomers to be facing financial challenges that directly affect their health, reports the Colorado Health Institute. Not only do millennials earn, on average, less than other working-age adults, but they are also the most likely among those three generations to report having problems paying medical bills.

Despite decades of federal and state efforts to bolster the healthcare workforce in some of North Carolina’s most remote areas, many rural counties in the state still face provider shortages, reports North Carolina Health News. Among the strategies to combat provider shortages is loan repayment, whereby state and federal programs forgive a portion of school loans of health professionals in exchange for service in areas of high need, but assessing the success of this strategy is difficult. Theoretically, the state’s rural areas should have gained more than 250 new providers in the last year, but the actual number is far lower. Cities also have pockets of high need and providers can choose placement there. All in all, advocates for rural health believe there needs to be a more coordinated plan for increasing rural healthcare access.  

Primary care associations and Health Center Controlled Networks are uniquely situated to serve as a bridge between individual health centers and prospective legal partners, as well as help plan for the financing, operation and sustainability of medical-legal partnership activities, according to a case study by the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership and the Montana Primary Care Association. The case study focuses on how the Montana Primary Care Association helped develop a statewide subscription model for medical-legal partner services, which integrate lawyers as part of the health center team to support addressing social determinants of health for patients. This new model allows health centers to “subscribe” to MLP services, creating a sustainable mechanism for supporting ongoing civil legal aid access for patients. Previously, geographic clusters of health centers would collectively contract and share a dedicated legal intake specialist and a lawyer from Montana Legal Services Association (MLSA) but ran into issues stemming from Montana’s limited resources and rural landscape. The success of the pilot is attributed to a few factors: partners defined shared values early on; legal services were integrated into the health center’s existing workflows; screening and data tracking were streamlined; and medical-legal partnership outcomes were tied to health center priorities in order to advance sustainability.