SHARE Quarterly Update: April - June 2015

Announcements

August 4th Webinar: Innovative Benefit Design for Connecticut State Employees

SHARE and the Center for Value-Based Insurance Design at the University of Michigan ("V-BID Center") will co-host a webinar on August 4th at 12pm Eastern. The webinar will feature findings from a SHARE-funded evaluation of Connecticut's Health Enhancement Program (HEP), an innovative benefit design for state employees and retirees based on V-BID principles.Richard Hirth and  A. Mark Fendrick of the V-BID center, who conducted the evaluation, will discuss the impact of HEP on the clinical process measures that the program targets. They will be joined byTom Woodruff, Director of Healthcare Policy and Benefit Services at the Office of the Connecticut State Comptroller, who will speak about Connecticut's adoption and implementation of HEP from the state's perspective. Learn more and register.

 

Tal Gross in NBER and The Hill: Each Uninsured Person Costs Hospitals $900 a Year

Tal Gross of Columbia University released an NBER working paper highlighting findings from his SHARE-funded study of  the effect of public health insurance on the hospital industry. The paper, which Dr. Gross co-authored with Northwestern University's Craig Garthwaite and Matthew Notowidigdo, uses 28 years of previously confidential, hospital-level financial data compiled by the American Hospital Association to examine the relationship between hospital uncompensated care costs and the size of the uninsured population. The researchers found that each additional uninsured person costs local hospitals $900 each year in uncompensated care. These findings were highlighted in an op-ed by Dr. Gross in The Hill's Congress Blog and were covered by USA Today and Modern Healthcare

 

SHARE Overview and Reach, 2015

A new report from SHARE provides a high-level look at the history and reach of the grant program since its 2006 launch. During this time, SHARE has awarded $8.9 million in research grants supporting 43 projects that have analyzed topics ranging from consumer behavior to employer coverage strategies to Medicaid/CHIP innovations. Researchers leading these projects have generated over 200 products as of June 2015, including reports, presentations, briefs, and peer-reviewed publications, and SHARE-funded research has been consulted and/or cited by national associations, the federal government and federal agencies, research organizations and think tanks, and a variety of state agencies. Accompanying this report are two additional documents: one providing historical grant award information and a second providing details about the most recently awarded SHARE grants.

 

SHARE Presentations at the AcademyHealth 2015 Annual Research Meeting 

A number of researchers presented finding from SHARE-funded projects at the 2015 ARM and at the State Health Research and Policy Interest Group meeting preceding the full conference. Sarah Gollust (University of Minnesota), Richard Hirth (University of Michigan),Karin Rhodes (University of Pennsylvania), Jill Rissi (Portland State University), and Erin Taylor(RAND) each presented at the full conference. Karen Brodsky (Health Management Associates),Angela Fertig (Medica Research Institute), Sara Gollust, and Erin Taylor presented at the Interest Group meeting. Slides from the following presentations are available online:

• "Specialty Drug Benefit Design and Patient Out-of-Pocket Costs in the ACA Marketplaces,"
  
  by Erin Taylor
• "Making ACA Coverage a Reality: A National Examination of Provider Network Monitoring Practices by States and Health Plans," by Karen Brodsky