April is Medicaid Awareness Month — and while Medicaid services 25% of Americans, many do not know how the program works.

By understanding how the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) works, innovators can better design health solutions that reach individuals on Medicaid and work for the organizations that support them.

Whether you are looking to partner with Medicaid payers or just want to know more about CMS programs, these 6 resources can help you increase your knowledge — and your health solution’s audience.

Medicare and Medicaid Basics — Medicare Learning Network

Keywords: intro to Medicaid

Medicare and Medicaid services are provided by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) — and many people aren’t familiar with the differences between these two programs. This fact sheet highlights the Medicare and Medicaid Programs, including what they are, who they serve, and what services they cover.

Solution Developers’ Role in the Future of Medicaid — A Q&A With Rachel Dixon

Keywords: health solutions, healthtech

Prime Health is a Colorado-based nonprofit working to ​​deliver impact and equity-focused, value-based, and technology-driven health reform. By accelerating the adoption of sustainable and impactful technologies, solutions, partnerships, and clinical models, Prime Health aims to improve health care and advance health justice. In this Q&A with In Full Health, Rachel shares her insights from over a decade in the Medicaid innovation and digital health space, offering advice — and a call to action — for all health solution innovators.

A big challenge for serving people on Medicaid well is that Medicaid is very often misunderstood. There are a lot of myths and biases about what it means to be a person on Medicaid … If you’re only focused on the commercial or privately insured health space, you are seriously and significantly limiting your Total Addressable Market (TAM). One of the biggest opportunities is just that we need more health solutions that work for the Medicaid market — yours could be one of them.

Rachel Dixon
CEO, Prime Health

CMS Framework for Health Equity — Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

Keywords: health equity

In 2022, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released an updated framework to further expand coverage, improve health outcomes, and reduce health disparities for those supported by CMS programs. This framework establishes priorities for future work and will inform CMS’s efforts for the next decade regarding how the agency will approach health equity. For health innovators looking to find partnerships in the Medicaid space, this framework can guide solution development and strategic goals.

Where HealthTech and Medicaid Meet — A Q&A With Adimika Arthur

Keywords: healthtech, health solutions

HealthTech 4 Medicaid (HT4M) brings payers, providers, patients, policymakers, and innovators together to create solutions that solve problems faced by Medicaid enrollees — as well as the health care partners that support them. HT4M membership can connect health solution innovators and investors to webinars, networking events, exclusive industry insights, and other unique opportunities. Here, Admika Arthur, founder and executive director of HealthTech 4 Medicaid, discusses how health innovation must consider the needs of Medicaid users in order to be truly equitable.

One thing I would want people to understand is that the largest economic indicator in this country is health. If you’re not healthy, you can’t contribute. So, I always start there, because this is not a partisan argument by any means.

Adimika Arthur
Founder and Executive Director, HealthTech 4 Medicaid

Ten Myths About Medicaid — The Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured

Keywords: Medicaid myths, Medicaid enrollment

Medicaid is the nation’s largest health coverage program measured by enrollees (53 million) and spending (over $300 billion of federal and state government spending). Because Medicaid has such a diverse set of obligations and is run jointly by federal and state governments there is much misunderstanding about facts related to the program. This fact sheet breaks down these myths, instead shining a light on the truth about this program and its recipients.

Medicaid Innovators and SameSky Health — A Q&A With Abner Mason

Keywords: culturally sensitive care, health disparities

With an extensive professional history focused on health equity, Abner Mason started SameSky to help remove barriers to health care by focusing on relationship building in Medicare, Medicaid, and Exchange lines of business. Here, he shares his insights on working in the Medicare and Medicaid space — and what health solution innovators should keep in mind.

We need to view all health innovations through an interconnected health equity lens. Medicaid is the largest health program in the US… If you can figure out how to innovate in Medicaid and build solutions that work better, you can have a profoundly positive impact on health care in the US simply because the program is so big. Medicaid — and health solutions that make it a priority — are essential to our country’s future.

Abner Mason
Founder and CEO, SameSky Health