JMedicaid Program

KPBSD has participated in School Based Medicaid billing for 16 years. In FY05, we had revenue of $95,304 and in FY19, the revenue was $195,768. The highest revenue was in FY11 of $343,530. 

It takes about .75 FTE of an accounting staff's time to bill for Medicaid services. In addition to the Medicaid billing, the speech language pathologists (SLP's), speech language pathologist assistants (SLPA's), occupational therapists (OT's) and physical therapists (PT's) spend time to do all the required documentation. Not all of our SLP's and SLPA's have the credentials needed to bill Medicaid for serving eligible students. This causes an inequity in job duties.

It is estimated to take 5- 10 hours a month to do the billing, per SLP, or 130 hours per month for all SLP's.

The hours spent on the paperwork for Medicaid billing could be better spent on serving our students. In recent years, hiring and retaining SLP's has been difficult. If we discontinue billing Medicaid, we feel that it would increase the moral and help us retain those already employed. It may also help us attract new employees, especially if they know Medicaid billing is not part of their job.

The Department of Health and Social Services changed the process for auditing of the Medicaid program. Beginning in 2020, all Medicaid providers will have to implement a self-audit process. If we identify an overpayment, we have 30 days to refund the funds. The department may review the results of a self-audit for accuracy, if the department determines that the provider's self-review is inaccurate, the department may impose sanctions. This new requirement will add additional time to the accounting staff for processing.

As staff costs increase, the revenue benefit to the district is minimal.

The cost of implementing the Medicaid program continues to increase and with revenue diminishing, administration recommends this program be discontinued starting in July 2020.