Other Populations

The U.S. behavioral health (BH) workforce faces significant shortages and distribution disparities, hindering access to quality care and worsening health outcomes. A comprehensive, centralized database of BH providers is vital for advancing patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR), comparative effectiveness research (CER), and evidence-based policymaking.

The first brief below provides insight into children’s and adolescents’ mental health service use in Medicaid and CHIP during the pandemic, by using a national Medicaid claims database.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) changes the way Medicare pays for prescription drugs. These changes will impact various stakeholders, including Medicare, Medicare enrollees, drug manufacturers, and others.

This New Jersey case study provides insights into the daunting challenges states face in seeking to address the home care worker shortage, which has become more acute as New Jersey and other states have striven to “re-balance” Medicaid long-term services and supports use and spending away from institutional care toward home and community-based services.

This ASPE issue brief lays out a proposed comprehensive analytic framework to fully evaluate the impact of the CMS Innovation Center’s efforts on the Medicare program and the broader health care system as a whole to test innovative payment and service delivery models that reduce program expenditures while preserving or enhancing the quality of care.

Direct care workers (DCWs) such as nursing assistants, home health aides, and personal care assistants play an essential role in the health and well-being of over 20 million Americans. Yet DCW wages are not enough to make jobs competitive with entry level positions in other industries with similar job requirements which exacerbates the challenges in recruitment and retention of these workers.

People living with dementia often have complex health and social support needs that can best be met by health care and community-based providers working together. This brief examines promising practices for bridging community-based organizations and health care systems in the providing comprehensive dementia care.

During the pandemic period, telehealth utilization increased among both urban and rural enrollees in Medicaid, with urban enrollees sustaining greater gains in telehealth utilization at the end of 2021. This Issue Brief is part of a series of ASPE Issue Briefs examining changes in Medicaid utilization of services delivered via telehealth by enrollee and provider characteristics.

Individuals returning to the community from prisons and jails face numerous barriers to reentry, and securing safe, stable housing is often the most immediate challenge. Housing is a vital element of successful reentry.

This study examined the extent therapist practices and nursing homes adopted telehealth services for physical therapy (PT), occupational therapy (OT), and speech-language pathology (SLP); explored the major challenges and facilitators in adopting telerehabilitation services, and whether these services were effective in addressing patient care and staffing needs during the public health emergenc