Medicaid Academy Application Webinar

What is a Medicaid Academy?  Supportive Housing is now recognized as a part of the healthcare landscape by federal and state authorities. The state of Minnesota has created the Housing Stabilization Services (HSS) benefit to assist low income Minnesotans to attain and maintain stable housing.  For providers of Housing Support, beginning in July of 2021, their services allocation will decrease 50% because the state has an expectation that providers will transition to the Housing Stabilization Services Benefit. For supportive housing providers, HSS will offer a sustainable funding stream for their activities. In the future, these services will bring increased opportunities for services funding, service expansion and capacity building. This entry into the health sector also brings new requirements around eligibility and referral processes, agency billing, documentation, quality monitoring, compliance, credentialing, and organizational policies and procedures that meet healthcare quality standards of care.

The CSH Medicaid Academy is designed to help human services and supportive housing providers, community based organizations, community health centers, and community mental health clinics learn the requirements for providing Medicaid-billable HSS and develop organization-specific plans for becoming Medicaid billers. The MN HSS Medicaid Academy will consist of four virtual meetings and four web-based educational clinics followed by individual technical assistance. The state aims to train and support provider agencies through the Medicaid Academy clinic and webinars. Select agencies that wish to pursue Medicaid billing following the Academy may receive additional individualized technical assistance, to implement their work plans.

How does it work? Each organization will send a team of two-four individuals to participate in eight virtual two hour sessions, eight days a week, in January and February, 2020.  Between sessions, there will be virtual trainings to review to support work plan development.  The teams should consist of: a team lead (agency Director or Clinical Services Director), lead service provider with experience delivering tenancy-support services, and the agency’s Quality Assurance/Quality Improvement lead. Other potential team members may include finance, development or information technology staff leads whom are a key decision maker or implementer of your agency’s work plan.

Teams will have assignments between sessions. At the end of the Academy, participants will have created a Medicaid billing work plan that they will be able to present to their agency staffs and Boards of Directors.

What will be covered in the Academy clinics? The online clinics sessions will cover all aspects of Minnesota’s  state Medicaid billing requirements and certification, federal regulations, contracting and credentialing requirements for managed care organizations, licensure for individual providers within your agency, and requirements for billing directly as a fee-for-service provider. The group clinics will provide participants the opportunity to share progress and challenges for peer-to-peer learning.

What happens between sessions? Teams are required to meet and complete assignments and self-paced web tutorials in between in person sessions.

How will our agency benefit from participating? The goal of the Medicaid Academy is to prepare permanent supportive housing providers who are already providing tenancy support and case management services to enroll with Medicaid to bill for covered services in order to increase their revenue and ability to draw mainstream (rather than short-term) funding to pay for supportive housing services. The Academy will also educate physical and mental health providers who are offering some supportive housing supports (case management) on how to expand the array of supportive housing services they offer through Medicaid and Medicaid Waiver programs. Participating providers will learn how to secure partnerships and contracts, comply with regulations, and become licensed, certified and credentialed. Your agency will also benefit from an opportunity to learn about best practices in supportive housing service delivery.

What we need from you:

• Statement about why your agency wants to participate in the Medicaid Academy, No more than a few words needed here.
• Completed application by December 1st by 5pm CT to be e-mailed to HSS-TATEAM@mesh-mn.org with all key team members (2-4 people) identified by name and email (Agencies who are approved to participate will be notified by December 15^th, 2020)
• Commitment to attending all of the sessions
• Commitment to completing assignments between sessions
• Commitment to cover staff time and travel for the sessions
• Each team must have at least one laptop they can bring to work on documents during the program
• Commitment to the process

Links to the training sessions will be sent to the emails shared in the applications.

There is no cost to those participating to ensure that all service providers ready to commit can participate. In return, Academy participants are expected to fully participate and it is expected that participating agencies will cover costs for their staff to attend all sessions.

For questions about the Medicaid Academy or assistance with filling out the application please contact: HSS-TATEAM@mesh-mn.org

If you would like to subscribe to Housing Stabilization Services at the Minnesota Department of Human Services,  go to Subscribe. For information about the program, go the DHS Housing Stabilization Services website.