Health care trust fund would fund measurable patient services

The attorney general would need approval from the advisory commission and governor before spending trust fund money. This applies to all spending from the health care consumer protection trust fund. The bill text does not require Executive Council approval for these expenditures. Spending must still follow the fund's other legal restrictions and any terms attached to the money received. This rule would apply 60 days after the act's passage.

Trust fund grants and contracts would be limited to eligible projects with defined, measurable patient-outcome goals and milestone-based payment controls. Eligible projects would serve New Hampshire health care consumers through services or implementations, including clinical care, care coordination, safety work, and community interventions. Projects must include baseline measures, target outcomes, and a plan for collecting and reporting data. Grants and contracts would include reporting schedules, audit rights, and provisions to recover money when agreed milestones are missed without good cause. Trust fund grants or contracts could not go to New Hampshire state agencies or instrumentalities, including through subgrants or subcontracting. These rules would apply 60 days after the act's passage.

Trust fund money could not pay for academic research, but projects could use limited evaluation to measure their results. The restriction covers basic, applied, translational, and hypothesis-testing research, and work mainly intended to produce general knowledge or publishable findings. Evaluation must support an otherwise eligible direct-service project. Evaluation must be incidental to service delivery and cannot be the project's main research effort. Any settlement, judgment, or other resolution could set additional reasonable limits on how deposited funds are used, if the use benefits state health care consumers. This rule would apply 60 days after the act's passage.