Gov. John Carney signed Executive Order #25 establishing health care spending and quality benchmarks. The Executive Order will form a subcommittee of the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council that will focus on reducing the cost of health care for Delaware families, taxpayers, and businesses.
The subcommittee will advise DEFAC and other relevant state agencies on spending, and will work closely with the Delaware Health Care Commission (DHCC) on improving the quality of health care in Delaware.
The council provides revenue forecasts on the state budget.
“Delaware has consistently ranked among the highest-spending states for health care, but we have not traditionally been a leader in health care outcomes. That needs to change,” said Carney. “This Executive Order reaffirms our commitment to lowering costs for Delaware families and improving the quality of care that Delawareans receive. We’ll do that, first and foremost, by improving transparency around the cost of health care services.”
In addition to setting the state’s health care spending benchmark for 2019 and beyond, the new subcommittee will review its methodology and provide the public and interested stakeholders an opportunity to provide input and consider their recommendations, a release stated.
The Executive Order also lays out quality benchmarks for the State for calendar years 2019 through 2021 for the Delaware Health Care Commission to follow in the categories of:
- Emergency department use rate
- Opioid-related overdose deaths
- Overlapping opioid and benzodiazepine prescriptions
- Adult obesity
- Adult tobacco use
- High school students who were physically active,
- Statin therapy for patients with cardiovascular disease
- Persistence of beta-blocker treatment after a heart attack.
The quality benchmarks will be reviewed every three years, starting after 2022, to reflect improved health care performance in the state.
“I am grateful to all of the health care stakeholders for the work they have done to change how care is delivered and paid for in our state,” said Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS) Secretary Dr. Kara Odom Walker. “As a state, we must address the cost of health care and the outcomes we are getting for that spending.”
This Executive Order was based on recommendations from Walker in August of this year, after a year of outreach and feedback from health stakeholders. Walker will publish a manual that contains the methodology for the health care spending and quality benchmarks no later than January 31, 2019.
“For more than four decades, the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council has played a vital, non-partisan role in tracking national and state economic trends and preparing credible and trusted state revenue and expenditure estimates,” said Rick Geisenberger, Secretary of Finance. “This Executive Order creates a DEFAC Health Care Spending Benchmark Subcommittee that will solicit public and stakeholder input toward recommending a credible and trusted annual target for per capita growth of total health care costs in Delaware.”
