After the governor signed into law a bill to reinstate cut Medicaid mental health programs, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare announced it would start reimbursing providers for the full services.
In a Medicaid information release posted Friday, Idaho Medicaid Administrator Sasha O’Connell wrote the agency would immediately resume reimbursing for the Assertive Community Treatment program, a mobile treatment program designed to serve people with severe mental illness who have struggled in routine treatment settings, and peer support services, which help people navigate mental health treatment.
The move came a day after Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed Senate Bill 1446, which restores funding for the programs that an Idaho Medicaid contractor, Magellan, cut after the governor’s order for budget cuts last year.
“Providers may immediately begin working with Magellan, United Healthcare, and Molina to restore services,” O’Connell wrote. “These managed care contractors will work with providers to reach out to individual members who had been receiving (Assertive Community Treatment) and Peer Support before their elimination.”
In less than three months since an Idaho Medicaid contractor cut a mobile treatment program for people with severe mental illness, four patients died, the Idaho Capital Sun reported. In the 18 months before the cut, providers say just one patient died.
In a statement, Magellan’s Idaho Executive Director David Welsh said “Magellan supports the State of Idaho’s decision to reinstate Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) services.”
Access Behavioral Health Services co-owner Laura Scuri told the Idaho Capital Sun on Monday that providers are working with Magellan to understand how the process to reinstate the programs will work, but hopes it is restored within the next week.
The letter from the state’s Medicaid administrator, Scuri said, is “acknowledgement that we need to start moving as quickly as possible. But these are massive systems that have to reconfigure some stuff to get us back, is what we’re being told. And we have to bring staff in, onboard. Most of us have to hire one or two positions, so it’ll be, before it’s up running and perfect, it’ll be about a month. But we’re going to try to put them together as quickly as we can.”
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