State Innovations in Horizontal Integration: Leveraging Technology for Health and Human Services

The ACA required states to make large-scale changes to their eligibility systems for Medicaid in order to create streamlined processing with the health plan coverage and subsidies that are available through health insurance marketplaces. To support these changes, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services made enhanced federal Medicaid matching funds available for states to update or build their systems, and states have also been given the opportunity of a cost allocation waiver that allows them to temporarily use this enhanced funding to support technology and services improvements to eligibility systems shared by Medicaid and other health and human services programs. This issue brief highlights examples of technology and services innovations that states are implementing in support of integration among health and human services programs and discusses common themes across efforts.