Raimondo: Reinventing Medicaid initiatives controlling costs, improving care

By Richard Salit
Providence Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE — One year to the day after launching her campaign to “Reinvent Medicaid,” Governor Raimondo highlighted what her administration claims it has accomplished since setting out to curb costs while improving the quality of health care for the state’s neediest.

At a news conference, Raimondo said the state is on its way to exceeding by $7 million its target of $70 million in savings this year and projects to save an additional $40 million in fiscal 2017.
The savings come from recommendations — made by a working group of hospital and insurance executives, government regulators and social-service advocates — that were approved by the General Assembly as part of the Medicaid Act of 2015. She announced the formation of that working group a year ago Friday.
“We are still very early in the process of transformation,” Raimondo said, but she added, “It’s working.”

Last November, five months into fiscal 2016, the state’s Caseload Estimating Conference projected that the savings might fall short by $8 million. That led to language included in the governor’s budget requiring Elizabeth Roberts, executive director of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, to “identify and implement fiscal controls within the overall budget of the office … to achieve the full savings” from Reinventing Medicaid.