Cara Stepanczuk uses quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods approaches to evaluate Medicaid long-term services and supports (LTSS), health care delivery reform, and community-based care management programs. Stepanczuk has extensive experience using federal and state Medicaid enrollment and claims data, CMS-64 financial data, and program-specific data. They specialize in developing data analytics products to shed light on complex topics and support decision making.
Stepanczuk leads the data analytics task for the LTSS Expenditures Reports project, which produces LTSS user counts, characteristics, and expenditures based on the Transformed Medicaid Statistical Information System Analytic Files (TAF). Stepanczuk recently directed the Medicaid Home and Community-Based Services: Differences in Spending and Utilization project for the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission. This project drew on the updated home and community-based services taxonomy to compare user counts and expenditures by delivery system, Medicaid authority, and LTSS user characteristics. Stepanczuk also helped lead the automation of the TAF data quality assessments that underlie DQ Atlas for the Medicaid and CHIP Business Information Solutions initiative.
Stepanczuk also designs analyses to understand the utilization patterns and health care expenditures for individuals using LTSS for a variety of state, local, and commercial clients. For example, they developed a profile of Medicaid beneficiaries who use HCBS and their usage patterns with the state’s Medicaid Statistical Information System (MSIS) data, as part of an analysis of the supply and demand of HCBS for the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS). Stepanczuk also helped produce dynamic quarterly reports with performance-monitoring measures for MassHealth’s Community Partners Program, which provides care management and coordination for Medicaid beneficiaries with complex needs for behavioral health care or LTSS.
Before joining Mathematica, Stepanczuk was a research associate for the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. They hold an M.P.A. from Princeton University.
This report identifies gaps in the availability of programs and services to meet member needs for home and community-based services and long-term services and supports now and in the next decade, limitations in provider capacity to meet member needs and coordinate care, barriers impeding members’ ability to find and obtain high-quality person-centered care, and problems stemming from inefficient program administration and operations.
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