We attended the monthly meeting with KDHE to review their progress on the transition of the Medicaid eligibility program back into the agency. Here is the latest progress:
Hiring: The agency continues to recruit and hire more eligibility workers, and in July focused on interviewing and hiring supervisor positions. They believe they have met their goal on supervisors (1 for every 10 case workers).
Building: KDHE has officially acquired new office space in a building at Forbes Field. Not all eligibility staff will fit into the new space, but their priority is to make sure all long term care case workers are kept together.
Systems and Structure: KDHE plans to have 7 units
KDHE plans to establish 7 “units” similar to the current pods under Maximus, that will serve solely long term care providers. 4 additional units will be dedicated to HCBS cases and reporting/administrative tasks. Each unit will have 10 case workers and a supervisor, and will serve approximately 50 providers. This is an improvement over Maximus, who has only 4-6 workers per pod.
Another interesting change is that 2 out of the 7 units dedicated to long term care will be made up of “eligibility consultants.” These are case workers with longer experience in long term care application processing, and they will work with homes and companies that need extra attention.
Pod Transitions: In order to avoid unnecessary confusion and problems, KDHE will be slowly transitioning each pod over to the state “units” throughout the remainder of this year. The first pod will transition in September, and then two more pods will transition each month after that. When it’s your pod’s turn to transition you will be hearing from KDHE. As the transition is taking place, KDHE will want to know of all pending applications and code changes that are pending in your building. They would like to know what they are walking into before January 1st.
