New health care delivery and reimbursement systems and new federal regulations will result in changes in how states deploy their Medicaid resources through supplemental payments in the coming years.

A new Commonwealth Fund report describes the kinds of supplemental Medicaid payments states currently make to hospitals – such as disproportionate share and upper payment limit payments – and notes the differing degree to which individual states use such supplemental payments.

It also describes how those supplemental payments may be restructured in the coming years to foster greater use of value-based purchasing and to reward achieving state-created quality goals through new delivery and reimbursement systems such as accountable care organizations, bundled payments, shared savings program, capitated arrangements, and shared risk.

Such changes have potentially serious implications for private safety-net hospitals.

Learn more about what the future may have in store for Medicaid supplemental payments in the Commonwealth Fund report Integrating Medicaid Supplemental Payments into Value-Based Purchasing.