Oklahoma voters have approved expanding Medicaid, narrowly passing a ballot initiative 50.48% to 49.52%, a margin of just 6,488 votes. Although four other states have expanded Medicaid via a ballot initiative, Oklahoma is the first to enshrine the expansion as a state constitutional amendment, making it exceedingly difficult for it to be rolled back; to …
Tag: Medicaid
State Directed Payment Arrangements to Support Behavioral Health Services during COVID-19
Written in collaboration with Subject-Matter Experts Roger Schwartz, Esq. and Mary Cieslicki, MHS Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) are the largest primary care network in the country, providing medical, dental, behavioral, and enabling services to over 29 million patients, including 1 in 5 Medicaid beneficiaries. Medicaid is the largest payer for mental health services in …
Looking Back to Move Forward: Understanding the Underlying Authorities to Help FQHCs Survive the COVID-19 Crisis
Guest Post by Susannah Vance Gopalan, Esq., Partner at Feldesman Tucker Leifer Fidell LLP in Washington, DC with editorial contributions from Bethany Hamilton, Esq. of NACHC State Affairs Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) have experienced rapid declines in patient encounters and revenues since the onset of the pandemic, being forced to lay off employees or …
Ensuring the Access to Health Care During COVID-19
One of the starkest daily reminders of the COVID-19 public health emergency has been less traffic on the road. As the public follows stay-at-home orders, road-rage inducing traffic jams have suddenly become a non-issue. With many – but not all – able to work from home, public transportation buses and trains have become hollowed vessels, …
Leveraging Medicaid Administrative Claiming for Health Centers
Guest post contributed by Lisa Chan-Sawin, MHA, and Gretchen Schroeder, MPH, Transform Health Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, critical safety net providers such as Community Health Centers are experiencing significant drops in patient revenue as a result of stay-at-home orders across the nation. During this global public health crisis it is critical to explore innovative …
The Hurdles and Barriers to Medicaid Coverage
In February, just as the COVID-19 crisis hit the United States, a federal appeals court struck down the Trump Administration’s latest effort to enable states to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients. At the time, advocates celebrated the outcome as validation of Medicaid’s longstanding role to improve health for vulnerable people without placing unnecessary obstacles …
More Children are Uninsured
The fresh start of a new decade brings renewed interest in the growing numbers of uninsured children in our nation. Four million children are now uninsured, an increase of than 400,000 between 2016 and 2018, according to the U.S. Census. The new numbers point to a new downward trend after a trajectory of coverage among …
2019: Leaving Us Certain about Uncertainty
We turn the page on 2019 and plunge ahead to 2020 with a lot of unfinished work. A key task left unfinished as we approach a new decade is long-term and stable funding for Community Health Centers, now operating under a temporary measure through May 22nd. Even so, health centers are no less supported; indeed, …
Health Centers Serving More Medicaid Patients Than Ever
Community Health Centers are serving more Medicaid patients than ever. A NACHC analysis reveals that in 2018 health centers served 1 in 5 Medicaid beneficiaries (up from 1 in 6 in 2018, or roughly 14 million people). As the nation’s largest network of safety net primary care providers, health centers serve a large and growing …
NACHC Launches New Medicaid Resources for Health Centers
NACHC is excited to share several new and updated Medicaid-related resources for Community Health Centers and Primary Care Associations (PCAs). NACHC coordinated with Feldesman Tucker Leifer Fidell to create or update resources to reflect changes in policies and experiences we heard from health centers and PCAs. The new and updated resources include: Medicaid FQHC PPS …