In March 2010, Congress passed national health reform, referred to throughout this report as the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA was enacted to address certain fundamental problems with our current health care system, including the growing numbers of uninsured, poor overall population health, poor or uneven quality of care, and rapidly rising health care costs. The ACA expands coverage to the uninsured, focuses on prevention to improve population health, and places an increased emphasis on quality measurement and reporting.
In order to implement the new law, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) and North Carolina Department of Insurance (NCDOI) asked the North Carolina Institute of Medicine (NCIOM) to convene stakeholders and other interested people to examine the new law to ensure that the decisions the state makes in implementing the ACA serve the best interest of the state as a whole. Each workgroup was tasked with studying specific areas of the ACA and providing advice to the state about the best way to implement these provisions as well as examining federal funding opportunities in their area.
This document is a compilation of reports from each of the health reform workgroups. Each report contains information about the applicable ACA provisions, findings, and recommendations. The recommendations of each workgroup was reviewed by the Overall Advisory Committee, and then sent to the NCIOM Board of Directors for final review. What follows is a summary of the NCIOM recommendations based on the work of the different workgroups and Overall Advisory Committee. The complete recommendations can be found in each of the workgroup chapters.
Financial support for this effort was provided by generous grants from Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation, The Duke Endowment, John Rex Endowment, Cone Health Foundation, and the Reidsville Area Foundation.