Political Pulse California Invests in Health Care Carla Kakutani, MD

political pulse

Carla Kakutani, MD Chair, CAFP Legislative Affairs Committee

California Invests in Health Care

We’ve reached the end of the legislative session, which means Governor Newsom has signed into law the 2021-22 State Budget, setting spending levels for the next fiscal year. The new Budget includes major investments in health care, including: • $50 million augmentation for the Song-Brown Primary

Care Physician Training program to fund new primary care residency programs. • $8 million to fund workforce programs that fund geriatricians or providers serving older adults in underserved areas.

• Expanding Medi-Cal coverage to undocumented adults aged 50 and older beginning May 1, 2022. • Funding for the California Advancing and Innovating

Medi-Cal (CalAIM) Initiative, which includes population health management services that would centralize administrative and clinical data from the

Department of Health Care Services, health plans, and providers. Access to this information would allow all parties to better identify and stratify member risks and inform quality and value delivery across the continuum of care.

• Extending Medi-Cal eligibility from 60 days to 12 months for postpartum individuals, effective April 1, 2022, for up to five years. • Extending telehealth flexibilities allowed during the federal public health emergency, including payment parity for audio-only modalities through December 2022 and coverage of remote patient monitoring. • Eliminating suspensions for Proposition 56 supplemental payment increases. • $300 million ongoing for investments in public health infrastructure.

• $1.08 billion for COVID-19 response costs. These funds will support testing and laboratory operations, vaccination, medical surge capacity, contact tracing management, and other state operations needs. Budget trailer bills are also passed along with the budget. Budget trailer bills include the detailed policy of how programs that received funds through the budget will operate. One of the trailer bills already signed by the Governor includes the transition of the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) to the Department of Healthcare Access and Information (HCAI). OSHPD’s growing portfolio made it time for the office to become a department. The change includes the creation of the California Health Workforce Education and Training Council to provide guidance on statewide health workforce education and training needs related to primary care, nursing, and oral, behavioral, and allied health. This new Council will replace the California Healthcare Workforce Policy Commission, which governed the Song-Brown program. The change also includes a new California Health Workforce Research Data Center that will serve as the state’s central hub of health workforce data with new statutory authority to collect additional workforce data. CAFP will continue to work with the new department during the transition to ensure investments in the primary care workforce remains a priority. Unfortunately, CAFP’s sponsored bill, Senate Bill 402 authored by Senator Hurtado, did not make it through the legislative process as it was placed on the Suspense File in the Assembly Appropriations Committee and did not make it out of the Committee. SB 402 would have created a collaborative of health care payers and purchasers, primary care providers, and health care consumer representatives to establish multi-payer payment reform pilots in areas hardest hit by COVID-19, particularly in regions wherein the impact has been greatest among minority and marginalized communities. The goal of the pilots was to transition small fee-for-services primary care physician practices into alternative payment models by aligning health plan contracts around uniform payment and quality measures.