Austin –State Representative Dianne White Delisi today announced the ceremonial signing by Gov. Rick Perry of  legislation (HB 1771) that creates a new model in health care for Texas' Medicaid patients. HB 1771 establishes that the State of Texas will move forward on Integrated Care Management, an emerging model of care that functions as somewhat of a hybrid between Primary Care Case Management (PCCM) and a Health Maintenance Organization (HMO). This new model of care will be adopted first as a pilot program in Dallas.


"This bill will take the doctor-centered approach of PCCM and add in, among other improvements, an overlay of the medical information management available in an HMO," Delisi stated. "This is an attempt to get to the best of both worlds through an approach that uses the strongest features from the PCCM and HMO models."


Delisi said she has been looking into the idea of a new medical model for some time. Concerns over the looming loss of federal Upper Payment Limit (UPL) funds to urban hospitals under a full Medicaid HMO system spurred her to offer this new option.


"The loss of UPL funds could have had a $150 million negative impact over the biennium for our safety-net providers," Delisi stated. "Since these public hospitals are tax-supported institution of local government, taxpayers at the local level might have had to make up the funding gap. It was critical that we find a way to both preserve UPL and generate savings for the state through better efficiency in Medicaid."


"ICM represents a chance to try something new regarding a Medicaid treatment model that works better for the patients, doctors, hospitals, local governments, and taxpayers," Delisi continued. "We also preserve access to a federal funding stream that is vitally important to our state's hospital system in light of the hundreds of millions of dollars of uncompensated care they absorb each year."