New guidance: modernizing Medicaid and benefits systems
States spend billions of dollars every year on the technology people rely on to access Medicaid, SNAP and other public benefits. Too often, that money goes towards keeping aging systems running rather than making them better and long-term, single-vendor contracts can leave states with little room to change course.
Our new guidance, Modernizing Medicaid and Benefits Systems, looks at why this is so hard, and what states can do differently.
Decisions about technology, procurement and financing are often made in isolation from each other, even though each one shapes what’s possible in the others. Drawing on our work with Colorado and conversations with state leaders and practitioners across the US, the guidance brings those decisions together and sets out six practical strategies from building cross-functional teams with real authority, to using more flexible contracts and treating federal approvals as an ongoing conversation rather than a compliance exercise.
“Modernizing these systems is difficult, but part of the challenge comes from how key decisions about modernization are made. We believe states that effectively align their decision-making across procurement, technology, and financing and do so around these shared principles and strategies will gain stronger control over their systems and be able to improve them more easily over time. Our guidance is intended to help states begin building this capacity.”
André Lima, Director for the U.S.
On 10 November at 2pm ET, we’re bringing together practitioners and experts to discuss what some of these approaches look like in practice.
