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@OHAOregon
April 24, 2024
Media contacts:
Erica Heartquist, Oregon Health Authority, Erica.J.Heartquist@oha.oregon.gov, 503-871-8843
Jake Sunderland, Oregon Department of Human Services, Jake.Sunderland@odhs.oregon.gov, 503-877-0170
More than one million people are keeping their Oregon Health Plan benefits due to Oregon’s efforts to expand coverage options
SALEM, Ore. — With more than 90 percent of the state’s 1.5 million renewals complete, more than 4 out of 5 Oregonians are keeping their Oregon Health Plan (OHP) or other Medicaid benefits.
During the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE), which ended one year ago in April 2023, the federal government allowed states to keep people on Medicaid benefits. This ended when the pandemic emergency ended, so over the last year Oregon has been making sure everyone on OHP is still eligible.
At this point in the PHE unwinding process:
Oregon’s 81.8 percent renewal rate continues to be the third highest in a national comparison of state renewal rates by KFF, a nonpartisan health policy organization. Oregon’s high renewal rates are due to proactive efforts by the state to keep people covered, including extended response timelines, and adding the upcoming OHP Bridge program for adults with higher incomes.
Members who have not received a renewal yet should:
Although most people are keeping coverage, approximately 240,000 people will lose or have reduced medical benefits and need to consider other coverage options.
On Feb. 13, 2024, the federal government approved a revised plan for Oregon’s remaining 126,000 post-pandemic renewals.
Many of these renewals were affected by a federal request for more than 30 states to review automated renewal processes or restorations of some Oregon Supplemental Income Program Medical (OSIPM) benefits. A May 2024 technical update to Oregon’s ONE Eligibility system will enable Oregon to use the new automated process for the remaining renewals.
Renewal letters will be sent to members in four waves between June and September. Members will still have 90 days to respond, and 60 days’ advance notice before any termination or reduction in benefits. This means the final responses would be due in December 2024, and the final closures will happen in February 2025.
Data about pandemic unwinding renewals appears in the Medical Redeterminations Dashboard. The dashboard data and these press releases will not include renewals for OHP members who have already renewed early in the unwinding process, who are coming up for renewal again. Over time, Oregon is switching to renewing most OHP members every two years instead of annually.
As of March 19, 2024, 1,317,810 people have completed the renewal process. This represents 90.6 percent of all OHP and Medicaid members.
If you need to sign up for Medicare for the first time, contact the Social Security Administration (SSA) at 800-772-1213 to enroll by phone or find a local office. You can also enroll in Medicare online at ssa.gov/medicare/sign-up.
The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) and Oregon Department of Human Services (ODHS) are committed to transparency and will continue to send monthly information about medical coverage among Oregonians as the agencies continue to track the programs. Check our ONE Eligibility Operations Dashboards for more frequent updates on medical renewal data and wait times for callers to the ONE Customer Service Center.
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April 23, 2024
Media Contact: Erica Heartquist, erica.j.heartquist@oha.oregon.gov, 503.871.8843
Oregon Health Authority furthers commitment to helping make healthcare more affordable across state
(PORTLAND, Ore. –) According to an Oregon Health Authority (OHA) report out today, the amount that Oregonians with commercial and Medicare Advantage insurance paid in deductibles, copays and co-insurance increased more than 17 percent from 2015 to 2022. As health care costs continue to grow, the amount that people with health insurance pay for their care – known as patient responsibility or patient cost sharing – is also rising.
On average, in 2022, people in Oregon with commercial health insurance were responsible for 13.4% of their total health care costs, and people with Medicare Advantage insurance were responsible for 9.1% of their total health care costs. This does not include how much people pay for their health insurance premiums.
Over the past several years, patient cost sharing increased by 17.4% for commercially insured Oregonians and 17.7% for those with Medicare Advantage insurance. That growth was driven primarily by increasing deductibles in the commercial market and co-insurance for prescription drugs in the Medicare Advantage market.
At least 28 percent of Oregonians were considered underinsured in 2021, meaning that even though they have health insurance, it was too expensive for them to use.
“Too many Oregonians are struggling to afford their health care, even as more than 95 percent of people in the state now have health coverage,” said OHA Director, Dr. Sejal Hathi. “This report provides more information about how much people in Oregon are paying for health care and the reasons for those cost increases. Health insurance should open the door to care, but instead, we know that even moderate increases in cost sharing can thwart access for those who need it most. OHA will continue to work both to rein in health care costs and to protect and expand access to care.”
When an individual or a household buys healthcare insurance, they agree to a certain set of arrangements for services are covered by the health plan and how much of the cost the health plan will pay. The portion of the cost of covered services that the patient is responsible for is “patient cost sharing.”
Unlike health insurance premiums, which are paid to the health plan whether any services are used or not, cost sharing only applies when services are used. Examples of patient cost sharing are deductibles, copays and co-insurance.
The report shows that people in Oregon with commercial health insurance paid for 13.6% of their total health care costs on average in 2022, with more than half of that going toward deductibles. Commercial deductibles grew 31.9% between 2015-2022, faster than the growth in commercial co-insurance (19.2%) and copays (4.3%).
This is in part due to the increase in number of people who have a high-deductible health plan. People with high deductible health plans are responsible for 22.9% of their total health care costs, even though their average annual health care costs were lower.
The report also shows that in 2022, people in Oregon with Medicare Advantage insurance paid 9.1% of their total health care costs, on average. More than 60 percent of Medicare Advantage cost sharing was in the form of copays and less than 5 percent was paid in deductibles.
In the commercial market, almost 40% of the cost sharing in 2022 was for professional services like a doctor’s visit. In the Medicare Advantage market, almost 40% of the cost sharing in 2022 was for prescription drugs, with people paying increasingly more in co-insurance for specialty drugs.
OHA presented preliminary findings on patient cost sharing in an educational webinar in March. The recording from that webinar is available online here. View the patient cost sharing analysis webinar slides here.
The Cost Growth Target Advisory Committee meets each month to discuss and plan strategies for increased health care affordability.
Explore the patient cost sharing data in an interactive online dashboard and find the full patient cost sharing report online here.
April 18, 2024
Media contact: Timothy Heider, 971-599-0459, timothy.heider@oha.oregon.gov
SALEM, Ore. — Measure 110 Behavioral Health Resource Network providers reported increases in client engagement over all service areas, according to recently released quarterly reporting data.
As providers continue to establish and expand services, the most recent data revealed a 346 percent client gain in screening services since the program’s start – indicating that more providers are seeing new clients for the first time. Supported employment showed the highest overall percentage gain at 422 percent.
Client screening is an important first step for people seeking substance use treatment and recovery. As a result, network providers have reported increased numbers of people are accessing low-barrier treatment services and supports.
The latest data also show a 258 percent increase in people accessing peer services, in addition to other supports. Many peer service providers reported meeting people in their homes or in community settings and using other measures to lower service barriers such as providing childcare and securing transportation to treatment.
Measure 110 network providers report the number of clients they serve and the number of encounters they have with their clients as a measure of overall engagement. Some clients may receive multiple services within a network or within multiple service networks.
The latest report covers network activities from July 1 through Sept. 30, 2023. Collectively, Measure 110 providers have now reported five quarters of data and expenditures from July 1, 2022, when the first network was established, through Sept. 30, 2023.
Overall, Measure 110 providers reported 267,000 encounters for people seeking peer support services and more than 220,000 encounters for substance use treatment over the 15 months of operations from July 1, 2022 – September 30, 2023.
OHA continually updates a comprehensive Measure 110 data reporting dashboard that includes quarterly data, expenditures, key demographic information, and aggregated narrative summaries for the 42 statewide service networks.
The dashboard also contains a section that shows how providers are conducting community outreach to directly connect individuals to services in their communities.
“Public awareness campaigns and community engagement activities play a pivotal role in dismantling social stigmas, misconceptions, and discrimination related to specific health services and conditions,” reported one provider. “By challenging and dispelling these stigmas, we empower individuals to seek care comfortably, which in turn, lowers the hurdles to accessing services.”
Other providers focused on reaching populations that historically have been under supported. “Our peers and navigators have been able to do community outreach on a regular basis…with peer support referrals and health screenings,” reported one provider. “[Our] outreach focuses primarily on the houseless, unstably housed, incarcerated, transitional, and marginalized BIPOC communities.”
Another provider described the value of providing supported employment services to people in need. “The housing portion of our services has helped build tangible life skills as our tenants work to remodel and create a beautiful space while earning a paycheck.”
Despite the reported growth in service access, nearly one-third of providers continue to report challenges around building their workforce.
The deadline for the next round of reporting for expenditure and program data is in April and will cover the time from October 1 - December 30, 2023. OHA expects to publish that data in Summer 2024.
Background: In November 2020, Oregon voters passed Measure 110, the Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act of 2020, which became effective Dec. 4, 2020, to better serve people actively using substances or diagnosed with a substance use disorder. In July 2021, the legislature passed SB 755, which amended the act and made it more feasible to implement.
People who provide drug treatment and recovery services and advocates for criminal justice reform wrote Measure 110 in response to the high rate of drug addiction and overdoses in Oregon, and the disproportionate impact of those outcomes on Oregon’s communities of color.
Their goal was to establish a more equitable health-based and effective approach to substance use disorder.
OHA is continuing to develop and sharpen strategic parameters around data collection, establishing standards for the type that is appropriate to collect, modifying internal systems and processes to capture data outcomes, metrics, and reducing administrative burden on providers.
The Measure 110 program continues to refine service data collection for communities of color and other disproportionately affected communities, as the networks transition toward implementing Race Ethnicity and Language Disability (REALD) standards in their data collection.
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EDITORS: Dr. Paul Cieslak of OHA is available for interviews until noon today. Contact OHA External Relations at PHD.Communications@oha.oregon.gov to set something up.
April 11, 2024
Media Contact: Jonathan Modie, 971-246-9139, PHD.Communications@oha.oregon.gov
PORTLAND, Ore. — Outbreaks of Salmonella infection linked to backyard poultry have been well documented, but a recent Oregon public health investigation highlights the risks of home chicken flocks for newborn babies.
An Oregon Health Authority (OHA) report in today’s edition of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) details an investigation into a case of salmonellosis – the disease caused by Salmonella bacteria – in a newborn whose parents kept backyard poultry.
OHA and Crook County epidemiologists investigated the case as part of a routine, multi-state review of backyard poultry-associated salmonellosis outbreaks reported to CDC from across the country during 2023.
According to the report, the baby boy was born at a hospital about 150 miles away from his parents’ home. The newborn was discharged with his mother to a relative’s home the day after his birth, but four days later was readmitted to a second hospital with bloody stool and lethargy, prompting health care providers to collect a stool sample for analysis. The sample tested positive for a strain of Salmonella known as Thompson.
Neither parent had symptoms of salmonellosis, nor had they been diagnosed with the disease. However, the baby’s father, who tended the family’s backyard poultry at the family’s home 150 miles away, was present at the hospital during the child’s birth and stayed with the child and the child’s mother at the relative’s home when the baby fell ill.
The newborn had not traveled to the home where the backyard poultry were kept during the time between his birth and his hospital admission for his illness.
Nearly a month after the newborn was admitted to the hospital with salmonellosis symptoms, state and county epidemiologists collected environmental samples from the chicken bedding in the family’s backyard poultry coop, where the child’s father had previously had contact. Two of the samples matched the Salmonella Thompson strain found in the child.
Paul Cieslak, M.D., medical director for communicable diseases and immunizations at OHA’s Public Health Division and co-author of the MMWR article, said epidemiologists don’t know the exact mechanism by which the newborn was exposed to the Salmonella Thompson strain. But it’s telling that the newborn’s family started keeping backyard poultry only about a month before the child’s birth.
“It’s possible one of the parents was shedding the organism even though they weren’t showing symptoms and exposed the baby during or after his birth,” Cieslak said. “The bacteria also could have been carried from the family home to the newborn on clothes, shoes or other belongings. Once it’s on surfaces, it can be transported and transmitted fairly easily.”
The case is a strong reminder about the importance of hygiene when tending backyard poultry, “especially when persons at risk for exposure are newborns and young infants whose intestinal flora and immune systems are still developing,” the article’s authors wrote. “In addition to adhering to recommended hygiene practices, families contemplating raising backyard poultry should consider the potential risk to newborns and young infants living in the household.”
The CDC has the following recommendations for backyard flock owners:
The article’s lead author was Stephen Ladd-Wilson, Acute and Communicable Disease Prevention Section, OHA. Other co-authors included Karen Yeargain, Crook County Health Department; Samuel Myoda, Ph.D., and Mansour Samadpour, Ph.D., Institute for Environmental Health Laboratories, Seattle; and Karim Morey, Oregon State Public Health Laboratory, OHA.
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EDITORS: Dr. Paul Cieslak of OHA is available for interviews until noon today. Contact OHA External Relations at PHD.Communications@oha.oregon.gov to set something up.
April 11, 2024
Media Contact: Jonathan Modie, 971-246-9139, PHD.Communications@oha.oregon.gov
Article published in CDC’s MMWR finds no deaths attributed to mRNA shots
PORTLAND, Ore. — COVID-19 vaccination is not linked to death from cardiac causes among previously healthy young people, according to an Oregon Health Authority (OHA) study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The study, appearing today in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), examined nearly 1,300 deaths among Oregon adolescents and young adults – ages 16 to 30 – occurring over 19 months during 2021 and 2022. It found that none of the fatalities that happened within 100 days of receiving an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine dose was attributed to vaccination.
The findings answer a question that’s lingered since early 2021 as state and federal public health agencies rolled out new mRNA vaccines during the pandemic: Do rare cases of myocarditis associated with COVID-19 vaccination put people at increased risk for cardiac death?
Study co-authors Paul Cieslak, M.D., and Juventila Liko, M.D., M.P.H., of OHA’s Acute and Communicable Disease Prevention Section, say suggestions of an association between receipt of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine dose and sudden cardiac death among healthy adolescents and young adults are not supported by the Oregon data they reviewed.
“According to information recorded on death certificates, among 1,292 deaths of persons 16 to 30 years of age from June 2021 to December 2022, none was found to have been caused by COVID-19 vaccination,” said Cieslak, medical director for communicable diseases and immunizations.
Of 40 deaths that occurred among persons who had received an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine dose, only three occurred within 100 days after vaccination. However, two of the deaths were attributed to chronic underlying conditions, and the cause was undetermined for one. No death certificate attributed death to vaccination.
Cieslak noted there were 30 deaths among persons this age that were caused by COVID-19. Among these 30 decedents, he said, the state’s ALERT Immunization Information System (IIS) database had records for 22 (73%), only three of whom had received any COVID-19 vaccination.
“Studies have shown significant reductions in COVID-19-related mortality among vaccinated persons; during the first 2 years of COVID-19 vaccine availability in the United States, vaccination prevented an estimated 18.5 million hospitalizations and 3.2 million deaths,” Cieslak and Liko wrote in their report.
The researchers acknowledged two limitations in their findings.
First, they could not exclude the possibility of vaccine-associated cardiac deaths more than 100 days after COVID-19 vaccination. They also pointed out that published data indicate potential adverse events associated with vaccinations tend to occur within 42 days of vaccination.
Second, although nearly a million adolescents and young adults had received a COVID-19 vaccination during the period of the study, the research could not exclude a rarer event among vaccinees in this age group.
“Nevertheless,” Cieslak said, “it is clear that the risk, if any, of cardiac death linked to COVID-19 vaccination is very low, while the risk of dying from COVID-19 is real. We continue to recommend COVID-19 vaccination for all persons 6 months of age and older to prevent COVID-19 and complications, including death.”
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April 4, 2024
Media Contact: Jonathan Modie, 971-246-9139, PHD.Communications@oha.oregon.gov
April observance follows CDC report showing U.S. deaths from excessive alcohol use increased nearly 30% since 2016
PORTLAND, Ore. — Oregon Health Authority (OHA) is recognizing Alcohol Awareness Month during April by encouraging people to have conversations about the harms excessive alcohol drinking causes to the health of communities – and that there’s never a wrong time to talk about the risks.
“Alcohol Awareness Month is a chance to seriously consider the role of alcohol in in our lives, and the toll it takes on our health and our communities,” said Tom Jeanne, M.D., M.P.H., deputy state health officer and epidemiologist at OHA. “We aren’t telling people to stop drinking. We’re saying that we need a new way to think about alcohol, and that’s it’s OK to talk about the risks to our health and for our communities.”
Jeanne said many people cross the line into drinking too much, partly because society makes it easy. “Alcohol has crept into so many settings of our daily lives, whether that’s at a work celebration, the local laundromat, or even a child’s birthday party,” he said. “Alcohol Awareness Month invites us all to reflect on the role of alcohol on our lives.”
Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show deaths from excessive drinking are on the rise. In February 2024, the CDC released a report that showed the average annual number of deaths in the U.S. from excessive alcohol use increased about 29% from 137,927 during 2016–2017 to 178,307 during 2020–2021.
The share of Oregon adults who drink excessively is larger than people may realize – more than 1 in 5. Most people in this group do not have an alcohol use disorder. However, by drinking excessively, people increase their odds of developing an alcohol use disorder later in life.
OHA uses the CDC definition of excessive alcohol use, which includes both heavy drinking and binge drinking:
Binge drinking among Oregon youth has decreased by 50% over the past few decades, according to Oregon Healthy Teens survey data. While youth in Oregon are binge drinking less, binge and heavy drinking among adults remains high: nearly 1 in 5 Oregon adults report binge or heavy drinking in the past month, data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey show.
Overall, excessive alcohol use is the third leading cause of preventable death and disease in Oregon.
“Alcohol Awareness Month reminds us all to consider hitting the pause button on drinking and learn about the harms it can cause,” Jeanne said. He added that OHA, local public health authorities and community partners are working together to build long-term, community-oriented solutions to excessive alcohol use.
The following are tips for those considering drinking less or trying to support those around them who want to drink less:
Note: If you or someone you care about is suffering from alcohol dependence or an alcohol use disorder, free confidential resources and support are available online or by calling or 1-800-923-4357.
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