GAO: CMS Should Pay More Attention to States’ Financing of Medicaid
The federal government does not adequately monitor how states finance their Medicaid programs.
It also lacks a sufficiently clear understanding of how they pay providers of Medicaid-covered services.
These are among the conclusions in a new study on Medicaid financing and payments by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
According to the GAO report,
GAO estimated that states’ reliance on provider taxes and local government funds decreased states’ share of net Medicaid payments (total state and federal payments) and effectively increased the federal share of net Medicaid payments by 5 percentage points in state fiscal year 2018. It also resulted in smaller net payments to some providers after the taxes and local government funds they contribute to their payments are taken into account. While net payments are smaller, the federal government’s contribution does not change. This effectively shifts responsibility for a larger portion of Medicaid payments to the federal government and away from states.
To address this challenge, the GAO urged CMS to collect more complete and consistent information about both state financing of their Medicaid programs and the manner in which states pay Medicaid providers. CMS neither agreed nor disagreed with the GAO’s recommendation.
Such a study could have implications for Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals because of the state’s growing dependence on provider taxes to fund its Medicaid programs in recent years.
Learn more about what the GAO found and recommended in its new report “Medicaid: CMS Needs More Information on States’ Financing and Payment Arrangements to Improve Oversight.”
Included in this month’s edition are articles about:
In the guidance, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services explains that because of several court rulings, states can decide for themselves whether to offset third-party payer payments from costs in their Medicaid DSH calculations for periods prior to June 2, 2017 but that beginning with that date, CMS will enforce its own interpretation of the policy.
Secretary Levine today issued an order requiring hospitals to make daily report of specified data regarding hospital facilities, beds, supplies, equipment, and staffing. Among the measures hospitals will be required to report daily are available beds, psychiatric beds, number of other beds in facilities, current emergency department capacity, number of COVID-19 patients, expected number of days remaining N-95 masks will last, expected number of days remaining until other personal protective equipment supplies will exhausted, supply of remaining NP specimen collection supplies in days, number of ventilators in facility and in use, and number of employees available for work. See the secretary’s order 
The Office of Medical Assistance Programs has issued billing guidance to CHIP managed care organizations on the subject of alternative screening sites related to COVID-19. Find that two-page document 
The Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs (DDAP) has issued a document clarifying the state’s response to federal guidance on the disclosure of patients’ substance abuse disorder records during the telehealth process. See that policy clarification 
Since yesterday, the Department of Human Services has issued the following four new guidance documents:
Federal