Ohio officials seek Medicaid eligibility overhaul

ANN SANNER

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — State offi­cials want to over­haul the Med­ic­aid eli­gi­bil­ity process for about 700,000 Ohioans who receive the tax-funded health services.

A draft of their plans was released for pub­lic com­ment Wednes­day after­noon. The pro­posal is aimed at sim­pli­fy­ing Ohio’s com­plex and lengthy process for deter­min­ing whether a per­son is eli­gi­ble for the pro­gram that serves the poor and disabled.

The changes would require fed­eral approval.

Deter­min­ing whether a per­son is eli­gi­ble for Med­ic­aid can take as long as 45 days, while case work­ers eval­u­ate appli­cants against more than 150 sep­a­rate categories.

State offi­cials want to move from what they call a frag­mented process, to a more sim­pli­fied model based on income.

The draft calls for replac­ing an out­dated com­puter sys­tem that fre­quently denies Med­ic­aid eli­gi­bil­ity in error and causes admin­is­tra­tive burdens.

Posted by AP News on Jun 6 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.