Access and use of health services by chronically mentally ill Medicaid beneficiaries

This article has two objectives: to quantify the access and utilization of services received by chronically mentally ill Medicaid recipients, and to compare service utilization and access under prepayment and fee-for-service (FFS) payment. The study setting is Hennepin County (Minneapolis), Minnesota, where 35 percent of Medicaid recipients were randomly assigned to receive services from prepaid plans. An algorithm was developed to identify recipients with chronic mental illness, resulting in 739 study participants, split approximately evenly between prepayment and FFS Medicaid. Data were collected through in-person surveys at baseline, and after 1 year. We found slight improvements in the majority of access measures studied and no significant decreases in the use of inpatient or outpatient services for enrollees in prepaid health plans. The results support efforts to expand the use of prepaid health plans to meet the needs of non-institutionalized chronically mentally ill Medicaid beneficiaries.