ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Alaska health officials are ordering health care providers to pay back millions of dollars in Medicaid payments made in error.
The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services is seeking to recoup about $15 million from about 1,100 health care providers, the Anchorage Daily News reported Tuesday.
The dollar figure each provider must pay back is still being calculated, but the payments will likely range from a few dollars to $1 million, said Jon Sherwood, the department’s deputy commissioner for Medicaid and health care policy.
“This was a mistake on our part,” Sherwood said. “It was an omission.”
The state cut Medicaid payments by 10.3 percent for services billed by primary, specialty and acute care medical professionals, but the reduction didn’t go into effect in October as planned. The error wasn’t discovered until last month, so the state is seeking to apply the reduction retroactively.
“We do have an obligation to recoup overpayments and return the federal portion because Medicaid is both federally and state funded,” Sherwood said. “We regret that providers have to deal with this.”
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The state implemented other cost reductions, but the Medicaid payments cut was held up by a work order to change the rates on the Medicaid payment system, Sherwood said.
“In the case of this regulation, it involved multiple divisions and would have resulted in multiple work orders,” Sherwood said. “We did not catch that one of the work orders that should have been attached didn’t move forward.”
The department expects to have a final tally for what the providers owe by the end of this month. Providers can make payments in installments, and the state may allow hardship waiver requests if the providers cannot pay.
“Providers in Alaska who are seeing people with Medicaid shouldn’t be the ones who have to pay the price for what the state of Alaska is calling, quote, an administrative oversight,” said LeeAnne Carrothers, president of the Alaska Physical Therapy Association.
