CMS: States to analyze Medicaid provider payments, access issues

May 3 2011

A rule issued Friday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services may keep the Supreme Court from hearing a case about state Medicaid payments.

Modern Healthcare: Rules Seeks To Address Conflicting Decisions On Medicaid Reimbursements
CMS officials may have kept the Supreme Court from injecting itself into the controversy over disparate state Medicaid payment rates for various providers through a proposed rule issued Friday. The rule would require states to perform an analysis of their provider payment systems under their fee-for-service Medicaid programs to determine if their payment rates have created "access issues." However, even if such access problems are discovered "states may be able to resolve those issues through means other than increasing payment rates," according to the explanation of the proposed rule (Daly, 4/30).