2025-066a: In order to address repeat income deficiencies from SWICA, Medicaid added The Work Number (TWN) as a new data source in August 2025. Since then, RI Bridges has been modified to first verify earned income against TWN. With this enhancement, Medicaid has seen an improvement in how earned in...
2025-066a: In order to address repeat income deficiencies from SWICA, Medicaid added The Work Number (TWN) as a new data source in August 2025. Since then, RI Bridges has been modified to first verify earned income against TWN. With this enhancement, Medicaid has seen an improvement in how earned income is verified during the post-eligibility verification (PEV) and annual renewal processes. Medicaid has determined the individuals flagged as being enrolled under the expansion pathway beyond their 65th birthday are the result of exceptions to the mass update eligibility process. Medicaid is working with our system vendor to develop a solution that will bypass this exception and terminate expansion eligibility for those turning 65 years old. RI Bridges appropriately identified the individual in question as requiring verification of citizenship status. However, as noted in the expansion age-out response, the mass update eligibility process exceptioned out, leaving the verification as unresolved and requiring manual review. Medicaid is working with our system vendor to develop a solution that will bypass this exception and terminate eligibility. Effective December 2025, the RI Bridges system receives quarterly matches from the SSA Death Master File (DMF). The DMF is automatically sent to the State as part of the quarterly PARIS data matching process. The State has deployed temporary system measures to process the file and automatically terminate Medicaid eligibility for individuals flagged as deceased on the DMF. As per section 71104 of the Working Families Tax Cut (WFTC) legislation, signed by the President on 7/4/25, the State will be deploying a long-term system enhancement to, “at least a quarterly basis, check the DMF to identify if enrolled individuals are deceased. If an individual is identified as deceased on the DMF, then the state must treat this information as factual, disenroll the individual, and discontinue any payments for items or services furnished after the death of the individual.” This enhancement is scheduled for the March 2027 release. In July 2024, federal partners operating the PARIS interstate match informed the State of a hold on PARIS interstate matching files. PARIS lifted the hold in October 2024. In November 2024, the State identified several defects in the PARIS results and suppressed requests for verification. A temporary system enhancement was logged to address the deficiencies and ensure the process was only requesting residency verification from individuals believed to be receiving Medicaid in another State. Long-term enhancements to the PARIS interstate match process are scheduled for late 2027. 2025-066b: Medicaid will continue to work with the Department of Human Services and HealthSource RI to improve reconciliation and quality assurance monitoring of eligibility and operational processes. Including, but not limited to automated quality control checks on batch processes, manual eligibility reviews of quarterly/annual activities, creating specialized reports, improving task logic, and identifying areas of repeat non-compliance to ensure appropriate controls are in place. 2025-066c: Upon notification from the systems team, Medicaid Finance will return any identified ineligible costs to the federal grantor. Anticipated Completion Dates: 2025-066a: Q4 2026 (exception scenarios) and Q4 2027 (PARIS) 2025-066b: Q4 2026 2025-066c: Ongoing Contact Persons: Anthony Salvo, Implementation Director of Policy and Programs, Executive Office of Health and Human Services anthony.salvo@ohhs.ri.gov Dezeree Hodish, Associate Director (Financial Management), Executive Office of Health and Human Services dezeree.hodish@ohhs.ri.gov