Evaluating Medicaid Access for Halfway House Residents: A Research Partnership with the Connecticut Department of Correction, 2013-2017

The goals of this study were to examine how providing Medicaid coverage for halfway house residents may affect care seeking, improve health care usage, and decrease criminal recidivism relative to providing health care through prison or jail medical facilities. To achieve these goals, we developed a researcher-practitioner partnership with the Connecticut Department of Correction (DOC) to implement a mixed-methods research design. Qualitative data collection included focus groups with halfway house residents; interviews with halfway house staff, correctional health providers, correctional officers, and state-level DOC officials; and site observations of DOC medical facilities. Quantitative data collection included collection of administrative and recidivism data from DOC, coding of study participants' DOC medical charts to measure their baseline health status and health care usage in prison or jail, and collection of Medicaid enrollment and claims data from Connecticut's Department of Social Services (DSS) to measure Medicaid enrollment and health care usage in the community.