The Medicaid Reform Advisory Committee, charged with making a recommendation to the General Assembly on reforming the state’s Medicaid system, held their first meeting on December 5. This meeting was devoted primarily to educating the  committee on all aspects of the current system and what the NorthCarolina Department of Health and Human Services (NC DHHS) has been doing toward reform.

The five committee members are: Chair, Dennis Barry of Guilford County, CEO emeritus of Cone Health; Peggy Terhune of Randolph County, executive director/CEO of Monarch, a behavioral health non-profit; Richard Gilbert, MD, MBA of Mecklenburg County, an anesthesiologist, who serves as chief of staff for Carolinas Medical Center; Rep. Nelson Dollar (R-Wake County); and Sen. Louis Pate (R -Lenoir, Pitt and Wayne counties).

The committee is to “obtain broad stakeholder input in a public forum and ensure transparency in the proposal development process” and present its proposal to the General Assembly no later than March 17, 2014.

At the meeting on December 5, DHHS staff reported on their ideas for reform, which included creating up to seven regional networks throughout the state. The handouts from the meeting are available here at the bottom right hand corner of the webpage. The group’s next meeting on January 15 will include public input from stakeholders including NCMS.

“We are pleased that the Department is seeking physician input,” said Bob Seligson, NCMS Executive Vice President and CEO. “The NCMS has put our intellectual capital and many expert staff resources into thinking through a physician-directed reform that will put the patient at the center of the system. We submitted our plan back in March in response to the Department’s RFI. As always, we are ready to work with all our health care partners to formulate a Medicaid reform plan that is financially sustainable and serves the most vulnerable people of North Carolina. There is still much work to be done.”