In June 2012, the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act, but made the law’s Medicaid expansion effectively optional for states. One year later – just months ahead of the ACA’s planned coverage expansions – experts from the National Health Law Program (NHeLP) offer an update on states’ decisions regarding Medicaid expansion and health insurance exchanges and discuss the implications for public health.

The webinar will be held Wednesday, June 26 from 10:00-11:00am Pacific time. To find out more about the webinar, or to register for the webinar, go to: https://cc.readytalk.com/cc/s/registrations/new?cid=9gdek2sn4mco

The recording of the “HRSA Genetic Service Collaboratives Webinar on Payment Reform and the Affordable Care Act” from April 24th is now available on the NCC YouTube channel. You can view the webinar via the following link: http://youtu.be/pZ7_rcdzAMU

The NCC will also be posting the recording to the new NCC site when it is launched in July.

Meg Comeau from the Catalyst Center will be presenting on general information regarding genetic services and the Affordable Care Act implementation. This webinar will be on June 19th from 1:00-2:00pm Pacific Time. To register, go to: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/438802290

ACMG is providing this webinar series as an educational resource to provide laboratories with information and resources they need to participate effectively in the ongoing molecular pathology rate-setting process. Payers such as Medicare will drastically slash reimbursements for the new molecular pathology (MoPath) codes moving forward, UNLESS laboratories take action now.

Part I: Molecular Pathology Reimbursement: Current State of Play

When: Monday, June 10th from 9:00-10:00am Pacific Time

Part II: Molecular Pathology Reimbursement: Taking Action in a Time of Crisis

When: Tuesday, Jun 11th from 9:00-10:00am Pacific Time

To register for both sessions, go to: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/125056578

On May 1^st, the Global Genes Project presented a webinar entitled “Essential Health Benefits: How this Provision Under the Affordable Care Act Could Affect Access to Rare Disease Therapies and Treatments.” To view the recorded webinar, go to: http://globalgenes.org/essential-health-benefits-webinar/

On April 16^th, Lianne Hasegawa gave a presentation entitled, “Using Telemedicine to Provide Pediatric Genetic and Follow-up Newborn Screening Services” on a webinar hosted by the South Central Telehealth Resource Center and the Heartlands Regional Genetics and Newborn Screening Collaborative. To view a recording of this webinar, go to: http://learntelehealth.org/media/thought-symposium/using-telemedicine-hawaii/

The National Coordinating Center for the Regional Genetics Collaboratives is hosting a webinar about payment reform and the Affordable Care Act presented by Meg Comeau from the Catalyst Center. The webinar is being held on Wednesday, April 24 at 2:00pm Pacific time.

To register for this webinar, go to: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/307585826

UW chemistry professors Michael Gelb and Frank Turecek, and UW professor of pediatrics C. Ronald Scott have developed a newborn screening test that can detect infants who are at risk for 15 different lysosomal storage diseases. Although the new methodology has been developed, it is still in use as a pilot program in Washington.

To read more about this discovery, go to: http://dailyuw.com/archive/2013/04/21/news/uw-professors-develop-new-test-newborns

The Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight released a funding opportunity entitled, “Cooperative Agreement to Support Navigators in Federally-facilitated and State Partnership Exchanges.” This funding opportunity will enable recipients to operate as Exchange Navigators in States with a Federally-facilitated Exchange (FFE), as authorized under the Affordable Care Act.

The application due date is June 7, 2013. No less than $600,000 will be awarded to at least two types of applicants in each FFE/State Partnership Exchange service area.

For more information, go to: https://www.grantsolutions.gov/gs/preaward/previewPublicAnnouncement.do?id=17645

A recording of the webinar entitled “Introduction to the Newborn Screening Technical assistance and Evaluation Program (NewSTEPs)” is currently available. NewSTEPs is a national newborn screening project designed to provide data, technical assistance and training to newborn screening programs across the country and assist states with quality improvement initiatives. This webinar reviews the purpose of NewSTEPs, and is intended for all newborn screening stakeholders and participants.

To view the recorded webinar, go to: https://hrsa.connectsolutions.com/p5py55i74gn/