Policy Research

Our clients often need to understand how their work is affected by new or changing laws, regulations, and other forms of guidance from all levels of government. The Mission Analytics Group team stays up-to-date on the policy issues that affect our clients. We prepare briefs, issue papers, and in-depth reports that help our clients respond proactively to policy changes.

Four examples help to illustrate our work on policy research.

For the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, we studied the feasibility of the state's adopting the "Community First Choice" option for its Medicaid program, which would provide community-based personal assistance services (including personal care) to financially eligible individuals who are elderly or have disabilities. As part of this report, we studied the implications of the federal laws and regulations that Colorado would have to comply with in order to implement the program, including those related to Medicaid (as overseen by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) and those related to wage and overtime for personal care workers (as overseen by the Department of Labor). We also identified a number of changes Colorado would have to make to its own laws and rules for Community First Choice to succeed. At the heart of our work was a cost model that helped the state estimate the costs of adopting CFC. As part of this work, Mission constructed a cost model that allows the state to specify which services will be included in the CFC program and how expensive those services are likely to be (based on uptake and level of need).

Mission is a partner to the San Francisco Office of Early Care and Education – Child Care and to the San Mateo County Office of Education on the planning and implementation of these Counties’ Child Care Subsidy Pilots.  The pilots were first authorized by California Assembly Bill 1326 (San Mateo) and Senate Bill 701 (San Francisco). Mission staff helped draft the pilot plans in both counties and continue to provide guidance to the local agencies in revising the pilots to meet the changing needs of the child care community. 

For the HIV/AIDS Bureau at the Health Resources and Services Administration, Mission (as a subcontractor to Walter R. McDonald and Associates) conducted site visits and drew on multiple quantitative data sources for a recent project Assessing Factors that Impact AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) Enrollment and Management in the Face of ADAP Waiting Lists.

In other work, we helped the state of California State Independent Living Council estimate the costs of expanding its network of Aging and Disability Resource Connections, which are funded in part by the federal Administration for Community Living. The model we built estimates the savings the state could achieve by providing community-based services to individuals who are elderly or have disabilities versus providing care for those individuals in institutions such as nursing homes. With these cost estimates, the state could make high-level policy decisions that are better grounded in economic realities.

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