Description: Healthcare risk adjustment methodologies have become increasingly complex, largely due to the belief that complexity enhances accuracy. However, a disconnect exists between how healthcare risk is assessed and how payments are adjusted. This article explores the stark difference between measuring the accuracy of a risk assessment model at a member level, and that of a risk adjustment mechanism at the health plan level. I show that a highly simplified approach that does not use diagnosis codes can have similar accuracy on risk adjusted payments to models that do. These findings suggest that accuracy is not a barrier to developing simpler risk adjustment methodologies, which can improve payment accuracy and reduce the financial incentive for coding diagnoses.

Description: Measuring the interplay between climate risk and morbidity and mortality is complex and often requires a multidisciplined team approach to meeting objectives. In this session, presenters discuss their journey and the twists and turns encountered in examining the link between wildfires, air quality, pollution, and morbidity and mortality implications. In addition to sharing their insights about the process, presenters will provide results from their, such as: - Mortality and morbidity risk trends influenced by climate change, wildfires, and air quality issues - Regional, risk class, socioeconomic, and temporal variations in these trends - Projections based on the observed trends and their implications for the future - The impacts on specific causes of morbidity and mortality, such as respiratory disease, cancer, and cardiovascular disease By attending this session, you will gain a better understanding of the following: - Implications of the study for life and health insurers - Key risk factors for individuals affected by air quality issues, the drivers for morbidity and mortality impact, and differences between the general and insured population - Process, data, models, and considerations needed for examining the mortality and morbidity consequences of climate risks like wildfires

Description: A priori, one would expect In Home Assessments (IHA) and Telehealth (TH) Encounters to identify some conditions that lead to actions that keep a member or two out of the Emergency Room. Similarly, one would expect Care Management and Disease Management engagement to ultimately influence some improvement in documentation that leads to more accurate Risk Adjustment. The business cases for these activities are often siloed to only the primary activity. The relationship between risk adjustment and care management is often more recognized as competing interests - one generally relying on utilization and the other trying to reduce it. Business cases can change dramatically when profiling has a more complete picture. This session will explore some techniques and share some observations - positive and negative - of the interactions between CoC and Risk Adjustment.

Description: Keynote Speaker: J.D. Kleinke, Author and Medical Economist J.D. Kleinke has been instrumental in the creation of four health care information organizations; has served on the Boards of several health care companies; and spent many years advising both sides of the political aisle on non-partisan, practical approaches to health policy and legislation.

Description: Those with ADL and/or cognitive needs and their family caregivers are in great need of support across their acute medical and long-term care custodial requirements. Today many entities are supporting families with integrated care delivery and financing approaches.

Description: Critical illness insurance is a popular supplemental health insurance product in the U.S. market. This article discusses how carriers have recently sought to add value by expanded the benefits offered in their critical illness products. Specifically, the article discusses the consumer need and development considerations of adding benefits for autism Spectrum Disorder, Mental health disorders, Specified Disease Coverage, and enhance Cancer Coverage to a critical illness contract.

Description: This article focuses on the recent surge of digital medicine data being seen in the healthcare industry. While an increase in data can generally be perceived as good, it is important to remember that current privacy practices need to be maintained, if not strengthened, to continually protect healthcare members. The COVID-19 pandemic helped fuel digital medicine data, but it also created new avenues for privacy to potentially be compromised (i.e. healthcare employees using personal devices while working from home). Digital medicine data is a very powerful asset, but it is also a massive responsibility. If mishandled, this data can cause more harm than good.

Description: Article discussing how the pursuit of value-based care as a consequence of health care reform laws such as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the Medicare Modernization Act has accelerated the use of risk adjustment and what it means to actuaries.

Description: While states face a wide variety of circumstances and have implemented diverse approaches to the MOE phase-out, we revisit the conversation to discuss emerging experience across stakeholders as we examine the operationalization of the PHE unwinding as it relates to this major disruptor in the distribution of the healthcare enrollment.

Description: "Risk adjustment is an important aspect of establishing appropriate capitation rates. When a set of services is carved out for specific management under a sub-capitation, establishing appropriate adjustments for varying levels of underlying risk is more complicated. Dive into analytical and operational challenges and resolutions as presenters share more about developing a risk adjustment model specific to the carve-out of behavioral health services through a real-life case study. You will further explore a definition of the use case, availability of historical data sets, selection of the modeling approach, learnings from the iterative modeling process, and the potential application of the results. After attending this session, you will be able to: Understand why a behavioral health specific-risk adjustment model has business value Understand the unique challenges related to developing risk adjustment on member and cost subsegments Understand the impact of trade-offs between model complexity and interpretability in the context of implementation Increase awareness of data nuances and requirements unique to this type of project Describe analytic techniques that can be investigated for use in projects of similar business objectives"