Lanier Cansler stepped down Tuesday as secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, saying that he expects the frustration of running the state’s largest agency to increase in an election year.

Cansler, who has headed DHHS since the beginning of Gov. Beverly Perdue’s administration three years ago, announced Jan. 13 that he would leave at the end of the month to start a consulting business focusing on finding better ways for health care to work in North Carolina.

He said he’s used to challenges – he was a four-term Republican lawmaker who has served for a Democratic governor. Still, reconciling the differences between the executive and legislative branches of government became tougher than ever in recent months.

“It does get frustrating whenever you’re working on the issues and you get caught in the political contest,” he said. “In each of their minds, I think what they’re thinking is the best thing for the state, but there’s great philosophical differences.”

Republican legislative leaders and Perdue have been at odds in recent weeks, for example, over how to handle a growing budget hole at DHHS.

For more on this story, click HERE.

The agenda will be posted as soon as it is available.

Visit us at ncsapa.org or our facebook page for more info and updates.

The agenda will be posted as soon as it is available.

Visit us at ncsapa.org or our facebook page for more info and updates.

Addiction Medicine 2012 Conference

March 30 and March 31

Asheville, NC

(Renaissance Asheville, 31 Woodfin Street, Asheville, NC)

Governor Perdue will not seek re-election, and plans to announce this afternoon.

http://projects.newsobserver.com/under_the_dome/sources_perdue_wont_seek_reelection

http://www.wral.com/news/state/nccapitol/story/10647166/

Rep. Brad Miller will not seek re-election, avoiding primary fight with ally and friend Rep. David Price.

http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/01/26/1807221/miller-wont-run-against-price.html

Follow us @ncsapaction

Information will be posted on the DMA and DMHDDSA websites.

• Feb 28
• March 21
• April 18
• May 22
• June 20
• July 24
• August 28
• September 19
• October 17
• November – none
• December 12

Click Here to download the complete HHS LOC meeting schedule (thru May 2012):Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/01/19/1788432/shifts-on-for-health-agency.html?story_link=email_msg#storylink=cpy

Gov. Bev Perdue announced the merger of two divisions within the state Department of Health and Human Services and DHHS leadership changes.

The Division of Public Health and the Office of Rural Health and Community Care are merging. Dr. Laura Gerald, former head of the Health and Wellness Trust Fund, will be the new state health director and run the Division of Prevention, Access and Public Health Services.

She is the former director of the Health and Wellness Trust Fund, and led Perdue’s Eugenics Compensation Task Force. After the legislature dissolved the Health and Wellness Trust Fund, Gerald went to work as a temporary adviser to DHHS Secretary Lanier Cansler on Community Care of North Carolina.

Dr. Jeff Engel, public health director, will become a special adviser on health policy, reporting to new DHHS secretary Al Delia. Engel has been public health director since 2009.

Anne Doolen
138 Presidents Drive
Durham, NC 27704

January 2012 Federation Meeting Minutes:Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

Employment First Position Paper:Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

February SA Federation Meeting

The next Federation Meeting is scheduled for Thursday, February 2nd from 10:00AM-12:00PM at the NC Psychological Association (1004 Dresser Ct Raleigh, NC).

We’re pleased to welcome Dr. NenaLekwauwa to the meeting.

Please bring a copy of the attached minutes with you for review. The attached agenda will be printed and disseminated at the meeting.

If you plan to dial in to the meeting remotely, please follow this instructions below.

Call-in toll-free number (US/Canada): 1-877-668-4493
Call-in toll number (US/Canada): +1-408-600-3600
Access code/Meeting number: 809 819 594

For assistance
——————————————————-
1. Go to https://gi.webex.com/gi/mc
2. On the left navigation bar, click “Support”.

You can contact Anthony at:
anthony.mcleod@governorsinstitute.org

Click here for the February Meeting agenda.

Click HERE to download the meeting agenda: Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

Visit us at ncsapa.org or our facebook page for more info and updates.

RALEIGH, N.C. — Nearly $1 billion is still a big number in state government — except maybe for North Carolina’s Medicaid program.

Health and Human Services Secretary Lanier Cansler got some good news as he prepares to leave his job at the end of the month. The news was about cost savings associated with a nationally-recognized health care initiative for the state designed to manage better outcomes for Medicaid consumers.

An outside actuary estimated a cumulative $984 million in Medicaid savings from 2007 to 2010 from the nonprofit Community Care of North Carolina networks. The networks help 1.2 million patients with treatments for chronic and special conditions, ensure they aren’t overprescribed drugs and encourage them to go to a primary-care doctor, not the emergency room.

But with a projected $150 million Medicaid shortfall this year, a larger shortfall next year and a projected one-third increase in enrollees in 2014 because of the federal health care law, Cansler sounds justified in worrying about the overall Medicaid program’s long-term finances. For an agency that will spend almost $13 billion in federal and state funds this year, $1 billion over four years remain just one piece of the Medicaid savings puzzle.

For more on this story, click HERE.

Up here in D.C. with all my fellow health advocates  I’m getting lots of questions about how we organize our Medicaid program in NC.  Why?  Well last month the national consulting firm Milliman came out with a report that put savings from our state’s Medicaid Community Care of NC program at nearly $1 billion.  The savings comes from better coordinating care by assigning people to medical homes.  They get the primary and preventive care they need, stay out of the emergency room and hospital and, not incidentally stay healthier.  The is government working at its best.  To learn more about the history and structure of Community Care NC check out the national toolkit – many other states are doing so because they want to do the same thing.

To link to this story, click HERE.

Before turning over the reins at the end of this month, Secretary Lanier Cansler is offering a candid assessment of the challenges facing the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.

Cansler sat down with N.C. Policy Watch this week to defend the agency’s performance following a critical state audit, and he criticized Republicans legislators who reneged on an earlier pledge to help close a nearly $150 million gap in the state’s Medicaid program.

“I think the legislature wants to keep pressure on the administration to try to continue to squeeze the Medicaid program,” said Cansler, who is a Republican.

The Secretary notes after three years of cuts to the department, DHHS doesn’t have discretionary funding to shore-up the Medicaid program, which serves more than one million people statewide.

This latest shortfall follows a budget mandate by the N.C. General Assembly last summer that Health and Human Services eliminate another $350 million from its bottom line.

To view the video, click HERE.

Medicaid program staff released updated estimates of the current year’s Medicaid state funding shortfall as well as their estimate of next year’s shortfall at the monthly meeting of the Medical Care Advisory Committee. As has been reported elsewhere, the recent court order reinstating coverage of personal care services for adults with disabilities, the Division of Medical Assistance added $9.4 million in estimated expenses into the current year’s budget, driving the current year shortfall up to $149 million.

Next year’s estimated shortfall of $243 million will be driven by many of the same factors that created this year’s problem, according to DMA Chief Business Operating Officer Steve Owen. The legislature’s double-cut to program inflation – a measure built on expectations about changes to Medicaid that are beyond state administration’s control, such as federal changes and provider costs – shows up yet again as a confounding factor in an already cash-strapped budget.

The Medical Care Advisory Committee remains opposed to across-the-board provider reimbursement rate reductions, despite the fact that there are few budget reductions options beyond provider cuts left within the executive branch’s purview. Owen reminded attendees that states cannot run deficits and that DMA is working closely with OSBM to identify a solution that, presumably, won’t require legislative action.

As one committee member asked, what happens next? The answer: no one knows.

To link to this story, click HERE.

http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2012/01/23/sec-lanier-cansler-discusses-his-resignation-the-medicaid-shortfall-and-the-challenges-facing-dhhs/

Lanier M. Cansler, who has been secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services since the beginning of the Perdue administration three years ago, is leaving to take a job in the private sector at the end of the month.

On Friday afternoon, Gov. Bev Perdue named her senior policy advisor Al Delia acting secretary of the department as of early February.

Cansler fought a never-ending battle for funding during his tenure, which coincided with the depths of recession in North Carolina. In October 2009, he called budget cuts imposed by the General Assembly “historic.”

“The challenge we have is to try to maintain the level of services to the extent we can with the dollars we have available,” he said.

As recently as October, he sent a letter to legislative leaders saying, “These will be devastating cuts to North Carolina’s medical providers and to our citizens in need of these medical services.”  As Republican lawmakers battled Democrat Perdue over budget cuts last fall, Cansler often found himself at the epicenter of the political firefight.

For more on this story, click HERE.

The funding shortfall in North Carolina’s Medicaid program has ballooned to $150 million, and the political fight over how to fill the growing budget hole shows no signs of a solution.

Health and Human Services Secretary Lanier Cansler says the Medicaid program, which serves more than 1 million people statewide, won’t be able to achieve more than $350 million in cuts mandated by the state budget under its current operations.

Cansler says the budget offers him only one option to accomplish the required savings: deep cuts to optional services and to the reimbursement rates the state pays Medicaid providers.

For more on this story, including video interview with Sect. Cansler, click HERE.

Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/12/27/1735664/booze-and-pills-catch-up-to-aging.html#ixzz1hkkJjSSw

Click the link below to listen to radio interview with Rep. Verla Insko (former co-chair of the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Health and Human Services) as she discusses the $139 million shortfall in NC’s Medicaid budget.

Rep. Verla Insko Radio Interview

State lawmakers overseeing Health and Human Services met all day Tuesday in Raleigh. But the $139 million Medicaid cash shortfall didn’t even make their agenda.

State Health and Human Services Secretary Lanier Cansler says the program, which serves more than a million people in North Carolina, will not be able to achieve more than $350 million in cuts mandated by the state budget under its current operations.

Cansler says the budget offers him only one option to accomplish the required savings: deep cuts to optional services and to the reimbursement rates the state pays Medicaid providers.

Republican leaders say those cuts won’t happen.

Even if the state were to try to make those cuts, budget co-chairman Rep. Nelson Dollar (R-Wake) said Tuesday, the federal government would not approve them. “It’s a practical impossibility,” he said. “I think that maybe some people who’ve been worried about that should not be.”

When committee Democrats asked why the shortfall wasn’t on the agenda, Dollar said it’s up to Governor Bev Perdue and Secretary Cansler to find the money to cover the problem.

“We’ve extended a hand to the governor’s office to work with her, and have gotten a lot of politics in return,” Dollar said.

Advocates say they’re less interested in the politics of the battle than its potential casualties: Medicaid enrollees worried about losing vital services.

For more on this story (including video footage), click HERE.

UPDATE:  This meeting has been Rescheduled.  Below are the updated date and time.

House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Health and Human Services will meet as follows:

DAY & DATE:  Tuesday, January 3, 2012

TIME:              1:00 pm

LOCATION:     643 LOB

TOPIC:  2011-12 Budget Implementation Update

Raleigh, N.C. — North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services officials said Monday that state lawmakers have changed their tune about finding funds to fill a projected $139 million Medicaid budget shortfall, forcing them to consider making catastrophic cuts to the program.

Unless lawmakers find more money for Medicaid, many adult services, like hospice care and mental health care, could be on the chopping block. The state could also reduce reimbursements to physicians who treat Medicaid patients by up to 20 percent, DHHS officials have said.

They say lawmakers publicly pledged to help fill the shortfall in October after it became clear that the agency couldn’t make the $356 million in cuts required in the state budget.

“We are not going to cut services, and we are not going to cut rates to make up for one-time liabilities,” said state Rep. Nelson Dollar, R-Wake, in October.

Speaker Thom Tillis also said at the time that lawmakers were looking at a $150 million surplus to plug the funding hole.

“That (money) could be appropriated for those areas where we’re coming up short without necessarily having to go back and cut any reimbursement rates or programs,” he said.

Legislative leaders have since privately indicated to DHHS officials that the money isn’t coming, according to correspondence between legislative leaders and Health and Human Services Secretary Lanier Cansler obtained by WRAL News.

That leaves officials with two options – ”large-scale rate cuts or the elimination of some optional services,” DHHS Deputy Secretary Michael Watson said.

For more on this story, click HERE.