Submitted by Lee Dobson, Area Director, Government Affairs (GAO)

Ten months into her new job Secretary of Health & Human Services, Dr. Mandy Cohen has been working to move her Medicaid Transformation plan forward. She hired an implementation guru from Missouri, Jay Ludlam as the Assistant Secretary for Medicaid Transformation to lead the process. Medicaid’s hope is to address the physical and behavioral health of North Carolinians. The goal is to improve overall health by creating an innovative and well-coordinated Managed Care environment that addressed the whole-person. The program design calls for three state-wide commercial plans and up to twelve provider-led entities (PLE) as regional plans.  The department’s aggressive timeline will release request for proposals (RFP) in early 2018, with a targeted transition in 2019, pending CMS approval.  BAYADA has been invited to participate in stakeholder discussions as Medicaid develops their Pre-paid Health Plan (PHP) model. Our goal, related to home care, is to ensure level of services and provider adequacy remains central in the program design and waiver application. GAO has involved technical experts from across our various practices to ensure our feedback is sound and supports BAYADA’s overall mission.