By Peter Frost
Tribune reporter
June 5, 2014
The chief medical officer of the state’s largest health system said Wednesday that Illinois will delay the launch of one of its Medicaid managed care programs by at least two months.
Advocate Health Care’s Dr. Lee Sacks, speaking at a health care event hosted by Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, said Illinois is behind schedule on the July 1 launch of its “accountable care entity” program for Medicaid patients.
The state is required by law to move at least half of its 3 million Medicaid patients into managed care by Jan. 1, a date officials said late Wednesday that they will meet despite the delay. Even with the delay, patients will still be able to access care in the same way they are now.
The transformation is huge; hundreds of thousands of the state’s Medicaid recipients will be shifted into managed care as part of a sweeping overhaul intended to fix a program widely acknowledged to…
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