During today's Iowa Medicaid town hall for providers, to IME Director Liz Matney stated that the Medicaid rate increases will be effective 7-1-23. They hope to have those rates ready for public announcement mid-June.  New rates might not be loaded into the system by 7-1-23, but they will be retroactive. 

The $7 million appropriated by the legislature for Medicaid reimbursement rate increases will be specifically for mental health therapists.  Their goal is to get Iowa Medicaid rates to at least 85% of the benchmark they were using. 

The additional $3 M that we didn’t expect will also be for mental health, but IME will have some discretion as to where to put that money.

An additional $3 million was appropriated for substance use disorder treatment specficially.

Keep in mind that this is only the state's portion.  The federal government contribution is around 63%.

The next Medicaid providers town hall will be held on Thurs. June 29, 2023.  You can register for that meeting here:

https://hhs.iowa.gov/ime/about/advisory-groups/townhall

Find recordings of previous town hall meetings here:

https://hhs.iowa.gov/ime/about/advisory-groups/townhall/archive

Another agenda item for the town hall meeting was the onboarding of the newest MCO, Molina.  Molina will be holding several orientation sessions for providers.  The training scheduled for 5-30 will contain both general content as well as specific information on behavioral health.  You can sign up for those trainings here:

https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/cu/LePBioe/MolinaIAProviderSignUp