In the past decade, the number of health information exchange networks has grown to more than one hundred disparate networks at the local, regional, and national levels. As a result, health care providers often use a variety of different networks and methods to exchange health information.

Julia Adler-Milstein and coauthors recently conducted their sixth national health information organization (HIO) survey. Their work, published in a paper in the May 2021 issue, informs federal policy actions to better coordinate varied approaches to health information exchange.

Signing up for health insurance through the ACA Marketplaces can be confusing. Some families end up selecting objectively "inferior" plans. Andrew Feher and Isaac Menashe study the use of postal and email messages to reach people who made choice errors in Covered California and conclude that those messages reduce plan selection errors by 3.9 percentage points.

For more on the ACA, Katie Keith covers how the American Rescue Plan Act expands the ACA in May’s addition to our "Eye On Health Reform" series.

The federal government has responded to the opioid crisis in numerous ways, including providing states funding for their own programs. Bradley Katcher and Christopher Ruhm examined how well these funds target the geographic areas with the greatest need.

Richard Nelson and coauthors assessed health care costs before and after people enrolled in the Supportive Services for Veteran Families program. After enrollment, people receiving financial assistance for housing-related expenses incurred $352 lower health care costs per quarter than those who did not receive the assistance.

This week on Health Affairs Blog, Katie Keith wrote about fixing the ACA's family glitch.

About Health Affairs

Health Affairs is the leading peer-reviewed journal at the intersection of health, health care, and policy. Published monthly by Project HOPE, the journal is available in print and online. Late-breaking content is also found through healthaffairs.org, Health Affairs Today, and Health Affairs Sunday Update.

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