Mayo Jacksonville expanding
ACA enrollment hits an all-time high in Florida and nationwide, Florida closed more than 1,300 Medicaid fraud cases in 2022, and the Mayo clinic is looking to expand big-time in Jacksonville with a new campus. It’s all in this week’s Healthcare Digest.
ACA Enrollment Skyrocketing: On its 10th anniversary, over 21.4 million Americans chose an Affordable Care Act (ACA) market plan in 2024, with 4,211,902 of them being Floridians, the largest number than any other state. Florida enrollment numbers have skyrocketed more than 200% since 2020. Florida is one of ten states that opted not to expand the Medicaid program in 2024, causing around 823,000 Florida residents to lose their coverage. These affected populations are the target of new federal budget proposals to help fill gaps forming in the market, according to the White House. President Biden’s 2025 budget proposal calls for “Medicaid-like” coverage for Americans who find themselves losing coverage in one of the ten states that did not expand.
Florida Medicaid Fraud Cases Run Rampant: A review published by The Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability (OPPAGA) looked into the state Agency for Health Care Administration’s fraud cases and found 1,397 Medicaid fraud and abuse cases in the state of Florida in 2022. While 48.8% of these cases were identified simply as overpayments, they amounted to over $22.5 million in payouts. The agency in all handled over 13,000 abuse and fraud complaints – administrative services that necessitated a $41 billion appropriation for Medicaid program operations in 2023-2024. The report shows that Florida Medicaid enrollment grew rapidly after the outbreak of COVID-19, from 3.8 million people to 5.8 million people, which the system had to then release once the lockdowns began to lift. Over several months the agency began to redetermine cases, with around 746,000 recipients being disenrolled of the 2.2 million recipients that were examined by August 2023. Later, it was determined that around $6.9 million had been paid in Medicaid for people enrolled in Florida but residing permanently in another state.
Mayo Clinic to Expand: The world-renowned Mayo Clinic of Florida is currently waiting for a rezoning review to add a 210-acre north campus to its facilities that would combine all previous Planned Unit Development ordinances into one property. The new northern campus would have over 7.5 million square feet of research and clinical labs, hospital, housing, and countless other support rooms and functions, to be built in stages, and fully completed by 2045. The rezoning decision does not add entitlements, but rather extends the approved uses at the already functioning facilities to the new north campus. “Mayo Clinic in Florida plans to strategically grow across our 602 acres over several decades, spurring significant economic development and creating thousands of new jobs in the medical sector,” said Mayo Clinic spokesperson Kevin Punsky, further promising the plan “will deliver best-in-class facilities, immersive and experimental learning environments, and innovation technology hubs that drive strategic collaborations dedicated to advancing scientific discoveries.”
LMA Newsletter of 4-8-24
