New Jersey

Medicaid program name: NJ FamilyCare

Medicaid ACO program name: Medicaid ACO demonstration project/Regional Health Hubs (RHH)

Status: Inactive; concluded 2019/Active

Summary:
Enacted as a pilot program in 2011, New Jersey established a three-year Medicaid ACO demonstration project to improve health outcomes, quality, and access through regional collaboration. New Jersey certified three Medicaid ACO plans in Camden, Trenton, and Newark that began operating in 2015, with the program ending mid-2019. The program had a safety-net focus and covered about 120,000 Medicaid beneficiaries. The ACO experiment was folded into a regional health hub model which expands the population health approach, including care management and coordination and an emphasis on data collection. The Medicaid ACO demonstration project was ended in 2019 and in 2020, New Jersey established the Regional Health Hub (RHH) program with the ACOs that had participated in the demonstration project. The health hub model aims to stitch together multiple systems at a regional level and coordinate multi-sector services for high needs populations by providing a community-based structure for convening stakeholders, including clinical and social service providers. The RHHs include the Camden Coalition,  Trenton Health Team, Health Coalition of Passaic County, and the Greater Newark Health Care Coalition. This regional model is intended to build upon the lessons of the Medicaid ACO pilot project while expanding and strengthening partnerships to improve health outcomes.

More Information:

• New Jersey’s Medicaid ACO Demonstration and the Transition to Regional Health Hubs: Implications for COVID-19 Response (webinar, 2021)
• The Policy and Practice Legacy of the New Jersey Medicaid ACO Demonstration Project (2020)
• ‘Regional Health Hubs’ Aim to Improve Services for Medicaid Patients (2019)
• A Road Map To Redesign The New Jersey Medicaid ACOs To Form Regional Health Hubs (2019)
• New Jersey Medicaid ACO Demonstration Project
• New Jersey’s Approach To Medicaid ACOs Is An Experiment Worth Watching (2015)