‘Medicaid Dashboard’ gives county-by-county details on 375,000 who joined program, what screenings they got, what they found

The expansion of the federal-state Medicaid program under federal health reform marks the biggest change in Kentucky health care since Medicare began in the mid-1960s. Almost 400,000 people have joined the program, raising its rolls to more than one-fourth of the state’s population. This is an important story in almost every county, and the state has the data to tell it.

As part of the $141,000 study of the first year of Medicaid expansion, Deloitte Consulting created for the state and its citizens a “Medicaid Dashboard” that gives detailed information about the newly eligible Medicaid enrollees in every county, by age, gender and chronic health conditions, along with information about payments to health-care providers in each county. Here’s a partial screenshot, with one county highlighted:

And here’s an example of how data from that county can be broken down by age and gender:

In addition to these data, and detailed information about payments to providers, the dashboard also reveals how many new Medicaid enrollees have been diagnosed with what chronic conditions, and what screenings and other preventive services they have received. This can also be broken down by county. For the dashboard, go here.

The data are only for people who were made eligible for Medicaid by the expansion, which raised the income limit to 138 percent of the federal poverty line, from 69 percent. The data do not include several thousand people who had been eligible for Medicaid under the old limit but did not enroll until the limit was raised.