Idaho

The future of U.S. health care reform is muddier now than at any point in the past two decades. Health care was one of the most important issues for voters in the 2018 election, but there is little reason to believe that substantive national action is likely any time soon. The Trump administration is taking aggressive steps to undermine the Affordable Care Act (ACA) but is limited in what it can do on health policy absent legislation from Congress. States are poised to fill this vacuum.

A house committee Monday voted against introducing a funding bill for the proposed Primary Care Access Plan, or PCAP. The program by Gov. Butch Otter’s administration, is a state-funded alternative to Medicaid expansion that would subsidize doctor visits for Idahoans who lack health insurance.

Rita Gorenflo’s 7-year-old son Nathaniel was in severe pain from a sinus infection.

But since the boy was covered by Medicaid, she couldn’t immediately find a specialist willing to see him.  After days of calling, she was finally able to get Nathaniel an appointment nearly a week later near their South Florida home. That was in 2005.

Some physician practices may consider the transition to becoming a patient-centered medical home (PCMH) to be a rough one, but thanks to the support of both public and private insurers, physicians in one state are moving aggressively to make the model work. 

A recently concluded demonstration project made meaningful progress toward introducing a "patient-centered medical home" approach at "safety net" practices serving vulnerable and underserved populations. Lessons learned in the course of developing and implementing the Safety Net Medical Home Initiative (SNMHI) are featured in a special November supplement to Medical Care.