Many states are experiencing budget shortfalls due to the COVID-19-induced recession. Since Medicaid accounts for a significant portion of states’ budgets, states often look to the Medicaid program for savings.

Since the Great Recession, states have invested in initiatives that can improve care and also lower costs—such as improving coordination of behavioral health and physical health services, making home and community-based options more available to those who might otherwise go into nursing homes, addressing social drivers of health, and lowering pharmacy costs. Not all of these initiatives can generate short-term savings, but they offer other actions that states facing budget shortfalls may take to achieve savings.

In “A Better Way to Manage Medicaid Costs,” a new toolkit prepared for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s State Health and Value Strategies program, Manatt Health partners Anne O’Hagen Karl and Cindy Mann and senior managing director Patricia M. Boozang outline state options to address Medicaid spending without harming enrollee health and provider stability and access to care.

To access the full toolkit, click here.