Carroll County Case Management Supervisor Justin Schieffer presented to the Carroll County Board of Supervisors a contract from Amerigroup Iowa, one of the Managed Care Organizations that will be taking over the state’s Medicaid program effective April 1. He said there is a time constraint on signing the contract he learned of after receiving a call at about 9:30 a.m. last Friday, March 11. The Amerigroup representative wanted to discuss contract status and revealed that there was a deadline of 11 a.m. that day for them to receive the signed contract or Carroll County would face a penalty. Schieffer told the representative he had not received the letter.
The letter was actually dated and sent out on Friday, March 11. This, Schieffer said, has been the state of chaos throughout the changeover process.
The Supervisors were presented with three options. If it was signed and submitted by Monday, March 14, there would be no penalty. If it was signed later, Carroll County Case Management would only get reimbursed at 90 percent of their normal rate. Finally, if they did not sign, they would receive no compensation at all for those clients. Schieffer said they contacted clients and found they would risk losing only a total of eight; with two of those signed with Amerigroup. And that, he said, is not even confirmed as the two clients had requested Amerihealth and the state signed them up for Amerigroup instead. Chair Neil Bock said that this really backed the Supervisors into a corner
The supervisors approved and signed the contract to meet the deadlines and to enable them to work with the clients until they could be reassigned to the Managed Care Organization they had requested.
