Managing Program Change: Experience from Maximizing Enrollment States in Leadership, Culture Change, Coordination and Data

Since 2009, the eight states participating in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Maximizing Enrollment program (AL, IL, LA, MA, NY, UT, VA, and WI) have worked to increase enrollment and retention of eligible children into Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and to establish and promote best practices in streamlining eligibility and enrollment systems, policies and procedures to share with other states. Each of the Maximizing Enrollment states pursued multiple strategies to work toward the state’s health coverage vision, which incorporated three key components of change: 1) providing leadership to achieve culture change; 2) improving analysis and use of data; and 3) focusing on agency and program coordination. This report, the second in a series of reports highlighting lessons learned from Maximizing Enrollment, examines how states brought each of these strategies together into a tapestry of change management that supported the states’ overall health coverage vision and goals for streamlining systems, policies and procedures.