Medicaid reform effort in CO shows promising savings

Colorado's key Medicaid-reform effort—matching thousands of state-supported patients to "medical homes" and careful case management—is showing promising savings, health officials will report to the legislature this fall. More than 128,000 Medicaid clients are enrolled in seven case management regions, and preliminary data for the first six months of billing shows a 14 percent drop for inpatient hospital stays among children, state officials said. Other categories showed lesser but still financially important drops in usage through better preventive care and weeding out duplicative services.