Dear Association Executives - Attached and excerpted below please find a letter sent yesterday by National Council for Mental Wellbeing President and CEO Chuck Ingoglia to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra on the recent cyberattack of Change Healthcare and how it significantly impacted and still is impacting mental health and substance use prevention, recovery, and treatment organizations across our country.
In the letter, we encourage HHS to undertake six additional actions to respond to the ongoing impact of this event. Specifically,
- Establish and quickly execute bridge payments in the next 30 days to mental health and substance use treatment organizations impacted by Change Healthcare's clearinghouse disruption, in line with the bridge loans/payments received during the Covid 19 Public Health Emergency.
- Issue guidance strongly encouraging other payers, including state Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) agencies and Medicaid and CHIP managed care plans to work with mental health and substance use treatment organizations to get advanced payments to these organizations.
- Ensure mental health and substance use treatment organizations are eligible to request and receive timely and equitable Medicare advanced and accelerated payments from their Medicare Administrative Contractors (MACs).
- Create a temporary dedicated task force for impacted mental health and substance use treatment organizations to report challenges with payors, Medicaid agencies, or companies involved with the cyberattack.
- Waive clearinghouse Medicaid and MCO enrollment requirements to expedite mental health and substance use treatment organizations ability to change clearinghouse.
- Formally require Medicare/Medicaid to waive timely filing requirements for Medicaid and MCOs across all 50 states until all Change Healthcare revenue cycle products are back online extending a period of 90 days following the reinstatement. (see BCBS response to Covid -19 PHE Federal Agencies Extend Timely Filing and Appeals Deadlines).
Please feel free to share this with your members.
Please let us know if you have questions or if additional information would be helpful.
Thank you - Reyna
Reyna Taylor
Senior Vice President, Public Policy & Advocacy
Policy Department
National Council for Mental Wellbeing
Direct: 202-774-1651
ReynaT@TheNationalCouncil.org
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Neal Comstock
Director of Membership
National Council
NealC@TheNationalCouncil.org
202 748-8793
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