We’re glad that state health officials are moving to salvage federal funding for residential treatment centers that help mentally ill children. If the state effort fails, thousands of eligible kids could end up without treatment.
But, it’s incomprehensible that the state didn’t act sooner. The federal government has for years sought information from the state about the centers, simply because they don’t fit into federally recognized categories for receiving Medicaid reimbursements, said Barbara Prehmus, director of medical assistance for the state’s Department of Health Care Policy and Financing.
“Over the last several years, the CMS (U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) has been asking states to provide details on how services are provided and billed in a whole range of categories,” Prehmus said. She says Colorado asked and received approval for residential treatment centers, but ” never provided detail on how these were paid for.
” There has been increasingly the expectation from CMS for the state to provide that information,” she said. Prehmus, who is new to her job, didn’t say why the state hadn’t provided the information. She said the state “opened the door to scrutiny” recently when it submitted an amendment to the state’s Medicaid plan and “we wrote out how the residential treatment centers are billing for and paid for these services.”
Colorado was notified recently by the federal government that the state’s 44 youth rehabilitation centers fail to meet such guidelines as requiring doctors and nurses on site in order to attain a certain level of accreditation. The state has until the end of the year to reach compliance or lose federal Medicaid matching funds. The state also could have to repay millions of dollars.
Gov. Bill Owens is asking for an extension of the Jan. 1 deadline and we hope Washington will go along. “If not, facilities won’t have an opportunity to work toward the higher accreditation,” said Owens’ spokesman Dan Hopkins, noting that his office only learned of the federal government’s notice about two weeks ago.
Prehmus said the 44 centers will have to be examined to see if – or when – they can become designated psychiatric residential treatment facilities eligible for Medicaid.
The state treasury is too weak to make up for the $34 million contributed by Washington in 2004 alone. Even if Referendum C passes this November, allowing the state to spend money it collects above the TABOR limit for the next five years, that would not guarantee money for this specific mental health programs. We urge the state, and Washington, to do whatever is needed to keep federal funding secure for a Medicaid program that aids children in distress.
