BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Senator Ricardo Lara, Chair
2015 - 2016 Regular Session
AB 2207 (Wood) - Medi-Cal: dental program
-----------------------------------------------------------------
| |
| |
| |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|--------------------------------+--------------------------------|
| | |
|Version: June 28, 2016 |Policy Vote: HEALTH 9 - 0 |
| | |
|--------------------------------+--------------------------------|
| | |
|Urgency: No |Mandate: No |
| | |
|--------------------------------+--------------------------------|
| | |
|Hearing Date: August 11, 2016 |Consultant: Brendan McCarthy |
| | |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
*********** ANALYSIS ADDENDUM - SUSPENSE FILE ***********
The following information is revised to reflect amendments
adopted by the committee on August 11, 2016
Bill
Summary: AB 2207 would enact an number of changes to the
operation of the Denti-Cal program, relating to provider
enrollment, program monitoring, and reporting.
Fiscal
Impact:
One-time costs of $370,000 and ongoing costs of $340,000 per
year for additional collection, analysis, and reporting of new
performance measures by the Department of Health Care Services
(General Fund and federal funds).
Unknown costs to make administrative changes to the system for
AB 2207 (Wood) Page 1 of
?
enrolling Denti-Cal providers (General Fund and federal
funds). The bill requires the Department to make several
changes to the processes and systems for enrolling dental
providers into the program, such as requiring the use of a
dental-specific enrollment form, pursuing an automatic
enrollment process for commercially-credentialed providers,
and improving the system for maintaining the provider network.
The Department has already began some of these processes, such
as simplifying the paper enrollment application. Other
activities, such as automatically enrolling
commercially-credentialed providers have not begun and will
impose unknown administrative costs to implement. On the other
hand, improvements to the system for provider enrollment may
reduce future administrative workload to process enrollment
applications, which are currently very labor intensive to the
Department and its fiscal intermediary.
Unknown costs to provide additional Denti-Cal services, to the
extent that the changes in the bill improve participation
rates by dental providers, increasing the utilization of
Denti-Cal services (General Fund and federal funds).
Currently, the state spends about $1.2 billion per year on
Denti-Cal for adults and children. Estimates of the
utilization rates vary, but are all generally low. There are
strong indications that low reimbursement rates and cumbersome
administrative requirements on providers result in low
participation rates by providers. To the extent that the
administrative changes in the bill improve provider
participation, there could be increased utilization. For
example, for every 5% increase in annual utilization by
children, the cost would be about $35 million per year.
Unknown potential cost-savings due to increased use of
preventative dental services (General Fund and federal funds).
Regular dental care, particularly for children, is likely to
prevent dental conditions, such as cavities, from becoming
more serious health problems that require more costly
interventions later. To the extent that the bill results in
increased utilization of preventative dental services in
Denti-Cal, there are likely to be reduced costs for more
serious dental services. Whether those avoided costs are
greater than the cost of providing greater access to
preventative services is unknown.
AB 2207 (Wood) Page 2 of
?
Author
Amendments: Clarify the requirements for deactivating a
Denti-Cal provider, delay implementation for the collection of
certain data, and make technical changes.
-- END --