Article in ABQ Journal by Winthrop Quigley

State Seeks Delay in Medicaid Changes

By Winthrop Quigley / Journal Staff Writer on Thu, Jun 7, 2012

The state Human Services Department – after persistent criticism from some stakeholders – has asked the federal government to delay consideration of its April 25 application to change New Mexico’s $3.9 billion Medicaid program.

In a May 29 letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, HSD said its failure to notify Indian health care providers in writing 60 days before submitting its application “raised a concern on the part of (CMS).” HSD said it sent written notification to the providers on May 22. HSD spokesman Matt Kennicott told the Journal the department would probably resubmit its application in late July or early August and would use the time to solicit more public comment on its plan.

Kennicott said the notification problem was a “bureaucratic technicality.”

“Their glitch is a major issue for us,” said Gary Tenorio of Kewa Pueblo Health Corp. “In the beginning there was a lack of consultation and communication between the state and the tribes. In their initial send-out they said they had meetings with the tribes, pueblos and nations. It hasn’t been that.”

The Human Services Department started its Medicaid redesign effort more than a year ago. HSD Secretary Sidonie Squier told the Journal in February that HSD hopes to slow the growth in Medicaid spending over five years by between $140 million and $205 million from the program through a combination of administrative streamlining, quality-of-care improvements, and changes in Medicaid recipients’ behaviors and emergency room use.

HSD got the first public reaction to its application last month at its Medicaid Advisory Committee meeting. Health care providers and advocates for Medicaid consumers raised a number of concerns. Several said that while the HSD concept sounded good, it was not clear how its ideas could be or would be implemented and at what cost to consumers and providers of health care.

Quela Robinson, a staff attorney with the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, said health care providers and Medicaid consumers saw the state’s application only after it was sent to CMS and that public comment HSD used to craft a Medicaid reform concept paper was limited to a handful of three- and four-hour meetings last summer held in the middle of workdays around the state.

“Now that they are finally responding to criticism about not being transparent and finally holding public meetings, the question is whether HSD will really listen to what the public has to say,” Robinson said, referring to HSD’s request for a delay. “In the past (the department) has merely informed people about final decisions. This is not good governance.”

In its letter to CMS, HSD says it “engaged in wide-ranging and open dialogue with all of our stakeholders in New Mexico throughout the almost full year we took to design the program.”

Anthony Yepa, a Kewa Pueblo Health Corp. analyst, said that “there are some very good things” in the state’s proposal but that the plan doesn’t adequately take into account a host of “federal laws that dictate and prescribe how health care in native communities should be implemented and carried out.”
— This article appeared on page C1 of the Albuquerque Journal

---

No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 2012.0.2178 / Virus Database: 2433/5054 - Release Date: 06/07/12