Department staff has reviewed the Legislative Audit Bureau’s (LAB) interim audit memo for Finding 2023-300: Eligibility for the Children’s Health Insurance Program. This is the department’s Corrective Action Plan. Recommendation (2023-300): Eligibility for the Children’s Health Insurance Program We...
Department staff has reviewed the Legislative Audit Bureau’s (LAB) interim audit memo for Finding 2023-300: Eligibility for the Children’s Health Insurance Program. This is the department’s Corrective Action Plan. Recommendation (2023-300): Eligibility for the Children’s Health Insurance Program We recommend the Wisconsin Department of Health Services work with the federal government to resolve these improper payments, including the determination of the total amount of improper payments, and return these amounts to the federal government, as appropriate. Wisconsin Department of Health Services Planned Corrective Action: The Division of Medicaid Services (DMS) acknowledges that we maintained eligibility under the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for individuals who had turned age 19, including SCHIP participants. It was our overarching policy to not terminate health care coverage upon certain changes in circumstances for Medicaid participants during the federal public health emergency (PHE). To comply with this policy, DHS made system changes at the beginning of the pandemic to maintain eligibility for all participants. After CMS provided additional information specific to SCHIP, DHS considered whether to make the necessary system changes to terminate SCHIP participants who turned 19 during the public health emergency. Because of the system limitation and DHS’s overarching goals to maintain continuous coverage, amongst other reasons, DHS decided to temporarily keep all CHIP participants enrolled until the public health emergency ended. DMS leaders met with CMS leaders on May 11, 2022, to discuss this compliance issue and related systems limitations. During that meeting, CMS indicated that they understood the system and communication challenges of having a single program that combines Medicaid and CHIP. CMS also acknowledged that the federal public health emergency was likely to end at any time, so making the required system changes would not be prudent. CMS said they would follow up with Wisconsin if they determined that further state action was needed, but they did not communicate to us after the meeting that they felt the compliance issue needed to be addressed. This confirmed the Medicaid Director’s decision to not pursue costly systems changes to support a change that might only be needed for a short period of time. After the PHE ended, DHS took proactive steps to identify aged-out CHIP participants and ensure that their eligibility was redetermined in the first two months of unwinding. In contrast to the rest of the CHIP and Medicaid population, whose renewals were distributed over a 12-month period from June 2023 through May 2024, these members’ renewals were accelerated to June and July 2023, so that their CHIP coverage would end as soon as possible after the end of the PHE. While we agree conceptually with the finding, the questioned costs identified do not consider that many (if not most) of the ineligible members would have been eligible for Medicaid as childless adults upon aging out of the CHIP program. We will discuss this likelihood with CMS and if necessary, use data available in our CARES eligibility system to assess how many of these members did retain eligibility as childless adults or in other categories of Medicaid after completing renewals in June and July. Anticipated Completion Date: March 31, 2024 Person responsible for corrective action: Jori Mundy, Director Bureau of Eligibility and Enrollment Policy, Division of Medicaid Services jori.mundy@dhs.wisconsin.gov. Rebuttal from the Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau - As stated in the finding, and as acknoledged by DHS, DHS maintained continous eligibility for SCHIP participants who were over age 19. This eligibility requirement continue through the public health emergency. Since CHIP and MEDICAID are separate programs, consideration of whether these participants could have been eligible for the Medicaid program would not have been part of our audit. Payments to providers for these participants were funded by SCHIP and not the medicaid program.