The Alliance of Safety-Net Hospitals has expressed support for proposed changes in health insurance enrollment guidelines for current Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) participants as the unwinding of continuous Medicaid eligibility fast approaches.

ASH also has endorsed a proposal from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to add two new essential community provider categories to those required of qualified health plans:  substance use disorder treatment centers and mental health facilities.

Both changes are among many advanced in CMS’s proposed Benefit and Payment Parameters regulation for 2024 and ASH believes both would benefit community safety-net hospitals and the communities those hospitals serve.

In a formal comment letter to CMS in response to the proposed regulation, ASH notes that such communities serve large numbers of low-income, medically vulnerable residents who have long faced challenges gaining access to care.  The change in enrollment processes, ASH maintains, will help individuals who may lose their Medicaid and CHIP benefits when continuous Medicaid eligibility ends to find new insurance without facing interruptions in needed medical care while the proposed network adequacy change will enhance the ability of community safety-net hospitals to discharge patients with substance use problems and behavioral health challenges to facilities better suited to addressing their needs and to do so in a more timely manner than is often possible today.

Learn more in ASH’s letter to CMS in response to the agency’s proposed Benefit and Payment Parameters regulation for 2024.