Six States to Help Develop Medicaid Primary Care Payment Initiatives - August 30, 2011

The Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS), a nonprofit health policy resource center, announced on Aug. 25 that six states will join the CHCS and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)—with support from The Commonwealth Fund—to work on Medicaid primary care rate increases. The Affordable Care Act states that Medicaid primary care provider payment rates must increase to Medicare rates for 2013 and 2014, as part of the Medicaid program expansion. The six states—Arkansas, Colorado, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island—have been asked to help CMS develop programmatic approaches and technical solutions to implementing the pay increases. More information on the program, Leveraging the Medicaid Primary Care Rate Increase, can be found here.