Healthy Texas Women (HTW) offers vital services to Texas women, including well-woman exams, contraception, breast and cervical cancer screenings, and some screening and treatment for postpartum depression, diabetes, and cardiovascular conditions. When women are able to plan and space their pregnancies, babies have lower risk of prematurity and low birth weight and mothers experience healthier outcomes too. The ability to treat and manage diabetes before pregnancy drastically decreases the risk of birth defects (e.g. congenital heart defects), which are expensive to repair, result in long NICU stays, and can lead to lifelong disabilities for children.
We support SB 1149’s goal to improve women’s health by leveraging efficiencies of the managed care model and by better connecting women to essential health services in HTW. Delivering HTW services through managed care can have many benefits, including care coordination for postpartum mothers and a chance to expand the provider network. We offer three recommendations that we believe will help women get essential services as HTW transitions to a managed care model:
Ensure HHSC consults with the State Medicaid Managed Care Advisory Committee (SMMCAC) to enable vital stakeholder input as HTW moves to managed care;
Provide legislative direction to Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) to identify options and seek steps to reduce enrollment gaps that will occur as a result of ending auto-enrollment of women from Medicaid to Pregnant to HTW and by ending adjunctive eligibility; and
Ensure current HTW and Family Planning Program (FPP) providers are considered Significant Traditional Providers in the course of implementation, which will ensure providers with a long history of serving women through HTW and FPP will be supported and continue to participate in the managed care version of HTW.