News & Bulletins
The Hilltop Institute periodically posts news items and issues electronic bulletins to disseminate information about Hilltop activities and publications. Below are the three most recent. Go to the News and Bulletin Archive, below, to view previous posts.
New Report Examines State Medicaid Agencies Response to the Opioid Epidemic
With funding from the National Institutes on Drug Abuse (NIDA), Medicaid Outcomes Distributed Research Network (MODRN) members and AcademyHealth conducted key informant interviews with nine states to describe the roles that Medicaid programs have taken to address the opioid epidemic and their policy and operational decisions. The findings of this research have been published by AcademyHealth in a report titled State Medicaid Agencies’ Multi-Faceted Response to the Opioid Epidemic.
As the MODRN research partner for Maryland, Hilltop’s research team worked with the Maryland Department of Health (the state partner) to provide the information for Maryland. Hilltop Chief of Staff Alice Middleton, JD, is a co-author of the report. Other members of Hilltop’s research team include Director of Medicaid Policy Studies David Idala, MA, Senior Policy Analyst Shamis Mohamoud, MA, and Policy Analyst Matthew Clark, MPH.
Learn more about Hilltop’s work with MODRN and the opioid epidemic here.
12/08/2021
New Health Services Research Article Documents Accuracy of Hilltop Pre-AH™ Model
A new study just published in Health Services Research by Hilltop researchers Morgan Henderson, PhD, Fei Han, PhD, and Ian Stockwell, PhD, and their partners at the Maryland Primary Care Program (MDPCP) Chad Perman, MPP, and Howard Haft, MD, documents the underpinnings, development, and performance of the Hilltop Pre-AH Model™. The Hilltop Pre-AH Model™ is a risk prediction model that uses a variety of risk factors derived from Medicare claims data to estimate the probability that a given individual incurs an avoidable hospital event in the near future. These risk scores are intended to assist MDPCP practices with the identification of patients that have a high risk of incurring an avoidable hospitalization or emergency department visit and are currently estimated for almost 400,000 individuals spanning over 500 primary care practices in Maryland. The authors found that 48.7% of avoidable hospital events are incurred by the top 10% riskiest individuals as of April 2020, indicating strong model accuracy, and that the scores significantly outperform the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services hierarchical condition category risk scores in terms of predictive power. Read the abstract.
Learn more about the Hilltop Pre-AH Model™.
11/11/2021
Bulletin: New HealthAffairs Blog Describes Hilltop Hospital Price Transparency Case Study
In a new HealthAffairs blog post, Hilltop researchers Morgane Mouslim, DVM, ScM, and Morgan Henderson, PhD, describe their continued work on hospital price transparency. Mouslim and Henderson have been investigating hospital price transparency and the effects of the January 2021 Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) final rule that requires hospitals to publish the prices of their services.
11/08/2021
