The Department of Health Services is holding public meetings to solicit comments on a draft proposal for Virtual PACE, a program to integrate the care for people who are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid. More than 120,000 Wisconsin residents receive their health care through a combination of their Medicare and Medicaid benefit. This proposal [...]

MADISON – Department of Health Services Secretary, Dennis G. Smith, today launched a website that outlines initiatives designed to keep the state’s Medicaid program sustainable, fair and equitable. The site was developed in an effort to ensure that the cost savings measures are posted for the public to see prior to any formal submission of [...]

Washington, DC – This week, U.S. Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) lauded Wisconsin Department of Health Services Secretary Dennis Smith for an apparent turn-around to support the city of Milwaukee’s application for Federal grant funding to help fight and prevent chronic diseases. Last month, Secretary Smith said that he would not write a letter of support [...]

BadgerCare Plus & ACCESS.Wisconsin.gov Programs cited for innovative, customer-focused approaches MADISON – Wisconsin ’s BadgerCare Plus program received a national “Innovation” award recently from the Council on State Government (CSG) and its ACCESS selfservice web portal received an honorable mention in the Stockholm Challenge, an international award program for projects using information and communication technology [...]

State program seeks to create foundation for physical activity in young children MADISON – Promoting physical activity to help prevent childhood obesity is the goal of a new grant awarded recently by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to the Department of Health Services (DHS). The funding targets two to five-year-olds in 20 regulated [...]

By Karen Timberlake, Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services Widespread use of lead based paint in older housing throughout Wisconsin has poisoned more than 46,000 Wisconsin children since 1996. More than 1,000 Wisconsin kids are reported each year with newly diagnosed lead-poisoning. Although the use of lead in house paints was prohibited in [...]

Minority groups 2-3 times more likely to be hospitalized with H1N1 The Wisconsin Department of Health Services kicked off National Influenza Vaccination Week this week by calling on local public health departments to step up their H1N1 vaccination efforts in minority communities. DHS released a report showing that H1N1 hospitalizations for minority populations were higher [...]

A decision by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) to make changes to state health care programs in Southeast Wisconsin could adversely impact the local economy, affecting hundreds of jobs in Milwaukee. DHS announced in late July that they would terminate contracts with private companies involved in the BadgerCare and Medicaid programs effective at [...]

Healthy school age children and young adults added back into target group The Department of Health Services (DHS) announced this week that it is expanding the H1N1 vaccination group to include healthy school age children and young adults. During the past few weeks, DHS has been monitoring the vaccine supply with public and private providers, [...]