6/17/22, 9:58 AM

Insurers and CBOs team up to get baby formula to New Yorkers in need

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June 16, 2022 05:30 AM

Insurers and CBOs team up to get baby formula to New Yorkersin need
MAYA KAUFMAN

JACQUELINE NEBER

Plus:New York’s health care during the pandemic 16th best in the country, report says

Bank of America commits $40M to expand primary care access

AHRC sells Long Island City building in $29M deal to build new facilities for New Yorkerswith disabilities

Plus:

New York’s health care during the pandemic 16th best in the country, report says

Bank of America commits $40M to expand primary care access

AHRC sells Long Island City building in $29M deal to build new facilities for New
Yorkers with disabilities

Health plans and community-based organizations are joining forces to help New Yorkers
cope with the continuing infant formula shortage.
Not-for-profit insurers EmblemHealth and MetroPlusHealth are trying to connect memberswith food pantries, milk banks and other social services organizations that are collecting
formula donations to distribute to families in need.
Dr. Andrea Zaldivar, director of complex managed care and social determinants of health forMetroPlus, said the health plan texted its members links to community-based organizations
with formula supply. The messages went out to thousands of English- and Spanish-speaking
members with infants age 12 months and younger.
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6/17/22, 9:58 AM

Insurers and CBOs team up to get baby formula to New Yorkers in need

Zaldivar said Spanish-speaking members in particular were eager to get on the phone with aplan representative to ask questions not only about finding formula but also other resources
they needed, such as diapers and referrals to parenting classes.
Emblem also provided its members with a list of community-based organizations such asSisters With Purpose in Brooklyn and Blanche Memorial Church in Queens.
Among the nonprofits working on the front lines of the crisis is Queens Community House,
which maintains a list of more than a dozen people who have visited its food pantry in needof formula. Each time a donation comes in, the nonprofit reaches out in order of greatest
need; maybe that person’s baby is sick, or requires a specific formula. The cans practically
fly off the shelves, said Zani Simmons, the nonprofit’s director of community engagement.
Linda Harelick, executive director the New York Milk Bank, a nonprofit in Westchester County
that collects and distributes breast milk from donors, said health plans could help combat theshortage by covering donated breast milk for all infants.
The nonprofit primarily provides milk to hospitals, which feed it to premature and sick infantsin their care. In such cases, the state’s Medicaid program covers donated milk at a
reimbursement rate of $5 per ounce, Harelick said.
“For premature and sick babies, it’s really a medical necessity,” Harelick said. “It’s like a
medicine.”
Families whose babies are not hospitalized can place orders for the milk bank’s excesssupply. The bank also negotiates single-case agreements with private health plans to cover
the provision of its donated supply to other babies in need. But even then, Harelick said, theorganization struggles to get reimbursement from insurance.
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office did not respond to requests for comment on whether theadministration will take regulatory action to get local health plans to cover donated milk.
While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is taking steps to address the monthslong crisis
by importing infant formula products from abroad, local innovators including Laura Katz are
working on a longer-term fix.
Katz, founder and CEO of Helaina, is using food science technology to produce andcommercialize a synthetic breast milk that offers the same immune-building benefits as thereal thing.
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Insurers and CBOs team up to get baby formula to New Yorkers in need

The startup, which has a lab at Deerfield Management’s Cure life sciences campus inGramercy, has been developing its product for more than two and a half years. The nextstep, a clinical study, is in the planning process and expected to get off the ground next year.
Katz said the FDA’s regulatory process for infant formula details specific timelines andinvolves many checks and balances—which is both a critical safety measure and asignificant barrier to new products entering the market. Every batch of formula needs to betested for contaminants and evaluated for adequate nutrient levels.
“It’s a tricky category to move quickly in,” she said. —Maya Kaufman

New York's health care during the pandemic 16th best in the country, report says
New York delivered the 10th best overall health care performance and the 16th best
pandemic health care performance in the country from 2020 to 2022, according to a
Commonwealth Fund scorecard released Thursday.
The fund ranked the 50 states and the District of Columbia based on data from the U.S.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. States were evaluated on 49 measures
including access to care, insurance coverage, quality of care, the cost of providing care andhealth outcomes. There were seven Covid-specific measures on the new scorecards,
including vaccination rates, hospital and intensive care unit capacity and excess mortality
rates. The data covers the beginning of the pandemic through the end of March 2022.
“I can hardly recall a time when the value of evaluating states’ performance has been moreapparent. The impact of policy on people’s health has been crystal clear,” Dr. David
Blumenthal, fund president, said during a news briefing. “Covid-19 has pushed healthsystems in all states to their limits.”
Each state received a score for each category. New York ranked seventh best in the Healthy
Lives category, which measured the overall health of the population, state public healthfunding and more. New York ranked worst in the Avoidable Hospital Use and Cost category,
which looked at estimates of per-person spending among people who received Medicaid andhow much Medicare and employer-sponsored insurance spent that went toward primarycare.
New York’s top-ranked individual indicators include having minimal days of hospital staffing
shortages due to the pandemic. The fund reported that New York had only 18 days of highhttps://www.crainsnewyork.com/health-pulse/insurers-and-cbos-team-get-baby-formula-new-yorkers-need

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6/17/22, 9:58 AMInsurers and CBOs team up to get baby formula to New Yorkers in need

ICU stress—and no days with hospital staffing shortages—this year. The state also
performed well in terms of seeing fewer preventable hospitalizations for people 65 and olderand fewer potentially avoidable emergency-department visits for the same age group. New
York’s bottom-ranked indicators include patient experiences at hospitals and Medicare
spending per beneficiary. The state ranked 10th in how quickly 70% of eligible people werefully vaccinated against Covid-19. It ranked 20th in deaths from Covid-19 in nursing homes,
with 88 deaths per 1,000 beds in 2022.
Throughout the country, many more people died sooner than they might have because thepandemic disrupted their care access. Blumenthal said that when looking at whole nations,health care spending does not correlate with performance.
As a nation, “we’ve spent a lot but we’ve done poorly,” he said.
The fund said that adding the Covid-specific performance measures means scores for thenew report are not comparable with others.
According to this year’s report, throughout the pandemic Hawaii had the best overall
performance, and Mississippi delivered the worst.
New York had ranked 10th on the fund’s September 2020 scorecard, up 10 places from theprevious year. —Jacqueline Neber
Bank of America commits $40M to expand primary care accessBank of America has pledged $40 million in low-cost and long-term capital to develop andexpand community health centers across the country, the bank announced Tuesday.
The bank said it will work with nonprofit community development financial institutions—organizations that work within communities that banks have traditionally deemed too risky toinvest in—in medically underserved areas. The CDFIs will distribute funds to local primarycare centers and other organizations, the bank said.
Louise Cohen, chief executive of Primary Care Development Corporation, a Financial
District–based CDFI, said it will receive $10 million to lend to health providers across thecountry.
“Many community health clinics serve people of color and people with lower incomes,”
Cohen said. “This capital is a lifeline in this rising-interest-rate environment.”

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6/17/22, 9:58 AMInsurers and CBOs team up to get baby formula to New Yorkers in needPrimary Care Development plans to measure the impact of the $10 million by how many jobs
are created in primary care organizations across the country, how many more patients haveaccess to community care, whether providers’ quality metrics have improved and whether
behavioral health services have improved.
Capital Impact Partners, the Reinvestment Fund and the Enterprise Community Loan Fundare receiving money from Bank of America as well. The bank said $10 million of the funding
will go to more CDFIs to encourage them to develop primary care facilities.
“Improved health and financial stability are integrally linked,” Ebony Thomas, president of thebank’s charitable foundation, said in a statement. “Enabling access to quality medical caredrives greater economic mobility and builds stronger communities.”
Bank of America, which reported nearly $94 billion in revenue last year, is the largest private
investor in CDFIs in the country, having put more than $2 billion in the sector.
Primary Care Development Corporation funds primary and behavioral health programs inlower-income rural and urban communities across the country. It has funded a little morethan $1 billion in projects to date and created and preserved more than 18,000 jobs. It is
working on another $10 million deal with Bank of America, Cohen said. —J.N.
AHRC sells Long Island City building in $29M deal to build new facilities for New Yorkers withdisabilities
AHRC New York City, the biggest provider of disability services in the state, sold its nearly
18,000-square-foot Weinberg Day Habilitation Center in Long Island City for nearly $29
million, the organization announced Wednesday. Williamsburg-based 39th Ave Equity bought
the building. Denham Wolf Real Estate Services in Midtown brokered the deal.
The Weinberg Center, located at 32-03 and 31-17 39th Ave., offered day habilitation services
to 165 adults with disabilities. Participants headed to the center during the day to takeclasses, go on community outings and accomplish their individual growth goals.
Chief Executive Marco Damiani said AHRC decided to sell the building because it was aging,making it harder to provide the best quality care, and program participants also have aged
and might need different accommodations.
The nearly $29 million will be completely reinvested into AHRC’s budget to update theservices it offers, Damiani said. The services include residential programs, home health care,
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Insurers and CBOs team up to get baby formula to New Yorkers in needdisabilities. Having more money to reshape services was AHRC’s motivation for selling now,
while the market is in good shape, Damiani said.
AHRC has freed up existing space to host the day habilitation program as it finalizes leases
and builds out the new facilities, to disrupt participants’ routines as little as possible, Damiani
added. Some participants will be receiving virtual habilitation services. The organization islooking in Jamaica and Flushing for new buildings, which likely will be smaller than theWeinberg Center.
That is consistent with the transition many providers have made in recent years to smaller,
more personalized program facilities.
The Weinberg Center is in a qualified opportunity zone, where new investments might beeligible for preferential tax treatments. Denham Wolf pushed to sell the building before the421-a tax-incentive program ended, according to a news release.
AHRC NYC is a chapter of The Arc, a national disability services provider with several
chapters in New York. AHRC NYC, based in the Financial District, provides services tobetween 12,000 and 15,000 people with disabilities throughout the city. Its staff numbers
about 5,000, and it has an annual budget of about $330 million. —J.N.
AT A GLANCENEW RULING: The American Hospital Association, America's Essential Hospitals and theAssociation of American Medical Colleges won their Supreme Court case against the Healthand Human Services Department, Modern Healthcare reported Wednesday . The decisionrules that HHS cannot change the 340B Drug Pricing Program reimbursement rates–
essentially changing what hospitals who participate in the program pay for outpatient drugs–
without gathering data on prices first. 340B is designed to get hospitals with large lowerincome patient populations, children’s and cancer hospitals, and other providers access tolower-priced drugs.
WEST POINT: U.S. Army medical personnel assigned to Keller Army Community Hospital inWest Point will soon train alongside anesthesia, plastic surgery, trauma and reconstruction
specialists at Westchester Medical Center, the hospital announced Tuesday. The Army staff
will gain trauma and critical care experience. This partnership is the latest in a series
between the Army and WMC, which is headquartered in Valhalla.

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6/17/22, 9:58 AMInsurers and CBOs team up to get baby formula to New Yorkers in need

BIG HEARTS: The Big Hearts Walk for St. Mary’s Kids, an annual walk to raise money tosupport the critically ill and injured kids receiving care from St. Mary’s raised $85,000 thispast weekend in Bayside, the hospital announced Tuesday. St. Mary’s is the only provider ofpediatric long-term and rehabilitative care in the city.

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