Disenrollment and re-enrollment patterns in a SCHIP.

This article examines the impact of four policy changes made to a State children's health insurance program (SCHIP) as it transitioned to Title XXI on program disenrollment and re-enrollment. The changes were: (1) expanded eligibility criteria, (2) reduction in the family share of the premium, (3) expansion of the mental health benefit, and (4) implementation of a 60-day wait period to re-enrollment in the program for children who involuntarily disenrolled due in non-payment of premium. Disenrollment was reduced by 20 percent after the changes were implemented.

Race and ethnicity and the identification of special needs children.

Increasingly, Medicaid and Title XXI Programs are using survey-based approaches to identify children with special health care needs (CSHCN) for quality assurance monitoring and program referrals. However, little work has been done examining how well instruments, like the Questionnaire for Identifying Children with Chronic Conditions and the CSHCN Screener, identify CSHCN among black and Hispanic families. Differences in item interpretation and in response styles could influence the identification of CSHCN from these groups.

Health care use and charges for adolescents enrolled in a title XXI program.

Purpose: To examine the use patterns and charges for adolescents with special health care needs (ASHCN) and adolescents engaging in risky behaviors (ARB) and both (BOTH), compared with adolescents with no identified special health care or risky behavior diagnosis (ANIC) in a pool of adolescent enrollees eligible for Title XXI services.

Methods: Claims and encounter data were used to classify 11,459 who had been enrolled in Florida's Healthy Kids Program for 2 consecutive years into 4 groups: ASHCN (n = 1363); ARB (n = 1801); BOTH (n = 773); and ANIC (n = 7522). Monthly per capita inpatient, outpatient, emergency room, and total use and charges were calculated and compared across groups using the Wilcoxon rank sum test, descriptive statistics, and odds ratios.

Crowd out: evidence from the Florida Healthy Kids Program.

Objective: To determine the percentage of children who had insurance coverage in the 12 months preceding enrollment in a state-subsidized program; the percentage of parents who had access to employer-based family coverage; and the cost of the families' share of the premium per month.

Methods: We randomly selected 930 families whose children were enrolled in the Florida Healthy Kids Program for a period of between 1 and 3 months and conducted telephone interviews with them in 1998 about their children's insurance coverage before program entry and their access to employer-based family coverage. There were 653 families in the final sample.

Children's health care use in the Healthy Kids Program.

Background: In 1990, the Florida Legislature established the Florida Healthy Kids Corporation to implement the concept of school enrollment-based health insurance coverage for children. The county school districts are used as a grouping mechanism to negotiate health insurance policies. The Florida Healthy Kids Corporation negotiates contracts with health maintenance organizations (HMOs) to assume financial risk and to provide health care services at each program site.

The School Enrollment-Based Health Insurance program: socioeconomic factors in enrollees' use of health services.

Objectives: The School Enrollment-Based Health Insurance program is designed to reduce financial barriers to children's health care use. This study sought to determine if any socioeconomic measures differed between enrollees with at least one health care encounter and those with no encounters.

Methods: Logistic regression was used to assess the impact of various predictors on the odds that a child would use health care services.

Enhancing the role public health nurses play in serving children with special health needs: an interactive videoconference on Public Law 99-457 Part H.

Public Law 99-457 Part H supports the development of systems to identify infants and toddlers with special health needs and provide these children the comprehensive care they need. Although public health nurses traditionally provide many of the mandated services. Part H, with its roots in education, presents new terminology, conceptual models, and challenges to public health nurses.