Within the most expensive 1 percent of Medicaid beneficiaries in acute care spending, almost 83 percent had three or more chronic conditions, and over 60 percent had five or more chronic conditions. Those were among the findings reported in The Faces of Medicaid II: Recognizing the Care Needs of People with Multiple Chronic Conditions, published this month by the Center for Health Care Strategies. The report examines the most common patterns of multiple chronic conditions within Medicaid and sheds light on significant opportunities for improving the quality and cost effectiveness of care for the program’s highest-need and highest-cost beneficiaries.
Other findings include the fact that, for Medicaid-only persons with disability, each additional chronic condition is associated, on average, with an increase in costs of approximately $700/month, or approximately $8,400 per year. Access the report.
