School May Be Out, But CHI is Still in Session

Summer has officially arrived – the season that brings us hot days, warm nights and more daylight for health policy analysis. It’s turning out to be a busy start of summer at the Colorado Health Institute. 

On Tuesday, Director of Legislative Services Megan Lane will deliver a presentation to the House District 38 Democrats on the Affordable Care Act and health policy trends from the 2014 Colorado legislative session. For CHI’s full analysis of the 2014 session, read our 2014 Legislation in Review.

Jeff Bontrager, Director of Research on Coverage and Access, and Anna Vigran, Senior Analyst, led another successful meeting of CHI’s Safety Net Advisory Committee (SNAC) Learning Lab last week. The group talked about emergency department use among Medicaid clients and how Colorado’s Regional Care Collaborative Organizations (RCCOs) are working to decrease avoidable visits. The CHI team is working on a summary publication from the meeting, but until then you can view the presentation and read past publications on the SNAC page of CHI’s website.

It’s hard to believe it’s already time, but planning for the 2015 Colorado Health Access Survey (CHAS) – funded by The Colorado Trust - has begun.  This week we will meet to start thinking about new questions that will capture the effects of the Affordable Care Act. We will continue to report on the 2013 survey until then.

Speaking of the CHAS, this week we will have a new CHAS Survey Snapshot focused on sexual orientation data.

In case you missed it from last week, Senior Director for Policy and Analysis Amy Downs blogged about the growth of Colorado’s Medicaid enrollment following the implementation of the Medicaid expansion to all Coloradans with incomes at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty level. In the first four months of implementation, enrollment in Colorado climbed more than 30 percent – from nearly 772,000 Coloradans to more than one million. You can read Amy’s blog here.