This report is part of the federal evaluation of Montana’s 2016 Medicaid demonstration.  Montana received approval to implement the ACA Medicaid expansion through a section 1115 demonstration in November 2015. The State implemented the demonstration, called the Health and Economic Livelihood Partnership or HELP, on January 1, 2016. In December 2017, CMS approved an amendment to Montana’s section 1115 demonstration that is to continue through December 2020. As of September 2018, nearly 100,000 Montanans were enrolled in HELP.

This report provides an overview of the HELP demonstration through 2018. It first outlines the design and scope of the federal evaluation of HELP, along with the scope of this Interim Evaluation Report and that of the Final Summative Evaluation Report for the federal evaluation. Subsequent sections describe the design of HELP and modifications made to the program over time, followed by results from focus groups, structured interviews, beneficiary surveys, and quantitative analyses of secondary datasets. Finally, this report presents an overall discussion and conclusions based on all of the evaluation components and thoughts on the HELP program moving forward. 

External Link:
https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/downloads/mt-fed-eval-draft-interim-eval-rpt.pdf