NMICoA Health Committee report from the MAC

New Mexico Indian Council of Aging

Health Committee
Report from the Medicaid Advisory Committee

The Medicaid Advisory Committee is tasked with oversight and advising the Human Services Department and Medical Assistance Division on the administration of the Medicaid Program.

There is one Navajo representative on this committee.

There is currently no representative of any of the Pueblos sitting on this committee. A representative can be appointed by any Governor, AIPC, 8 Northern or Southern Pueblo’s organizations, for consideration on this committee.  A letter needs to be submitted to Secretary Squire to nominate an individual for this oversight Committee.

The MAD director Julie Weinberg will reconvene the Native American Subcommittee of the MAC sometime in May, interested individuals should contact Mrs. Weinberg for involvement on the subcommittee.

There was no real new information regarding the progress of Centennial Care.  HSD MAD are still on track to begin open enrollment starting October 1, 2013, and go live on January 1, 2014. CMS still has not approved the entire waiver.

MAD is planning to establish workgroups, much like the HIX, to seek stakeholder input regarding several areas of Centennial Care development and implementation, all appointment will be made by HSD and MAD.

SCI individuals will be considered a new population with the Medicaid Expansion, estimated to be 2/3 of the Expansion, and will qualify for the 100% FMAP for the first 3 years. (2017)

There was some discussion regarding integrating the ASPEN Web Portal and the HIX portal.  The ASPEN (Medicaid) web portal will have the ability to determine eligibility for HIX and direct consumers to HIX web portal.  Will include a Telephone hotline for assistance with eligibility determination.

Questions I asked Julie Weinberg:

Q:What has HSD MAD done to resolve the issues Tribes have outlined in the last Tribal Consultation session?

A: I not sure what you mean they brought up a lot of things

Q: Has there been and communication between the HSD and Tribal leaders and Health Programs?

A: We are putting letters together to start up our advisory committee. The Native American Technical Advisory committee.

Q: When is the next Tribal Consultation taking place where you (Julie) explain all the information presented here today to Tribal leadership and Tribal Health Programs? All the information presented here today is relevant to tribal health programs and how they will integrate with Centennial Care.  When are you going to release this information to Tribal leaders?

A: I don’t know when that will happen.

Q: When will the Native American MAC subcommittee start meeting again?

A: We are looking at a couple of dates in May we want to give everyone enough time to come in start, we felt the need to wait until the Legislative session was completed and we got a decision from  CMS regarding the mandatory enrollment on Native Americans into managed care organizations.

Q: So what you are saying is that given the short amount of time we have to implement Centennial Care Tribal Consultation will not happen for a month…?

A: Frankly I don’t see a need for anymore Tribal consultations. 

Q: With regards to the MCOs will the Readiness Reviews of the MCO’s be made available to the public before and/or after the open enrollment period?

A: Generally that is not made public. Any information that is reviewed in the readiness reviews will be looked at in the NA Technical Advisory subcommittee.