On March 23, Governor Dayton held a press conference to announce the following policy changes for health plans in Minnesota:

1) Competitive bidding for managed care contracts that cover 500,000 Minnesotans at annual cost of over $3 billion.

2) An executive order:

A) Establishes a managed care website for all publicly available information and reports that relate to managed care procurement, financials, health outcome performance measures, contracts, and other public information for state public programs;

B) Develops an annual comprehensive managed care report in consultation with the Commissioners of Health and Commerce that includes detailed information on administrative expenses, premium revenues, provider payments and reimbursement rates, contributions to reserves, enrollee quality measures, service costs and utilizations, enrollee access to services, capitation rate setting and risk adjustment methods, and managed care procurement and contracting processes; and

C) Submits data for state public programs to the Commissioner of Commerce.

3) Dayton asked health plans to voluntarily contribute excess reserves and profits in advance of the health plans's release of results that will be disclosed on April 1. UCare Minnesota recently announced its intention to voluntarily contribute $30 million.

4) A Request for Information (see next article in this issue) hopes to continue the development of health care delivery by connecting patients directly with hospitals, clinics and other health care providers to improve the quality of care.

Phil Manz
952.851.2484
pmanz@careproviders.org

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