Medicaid Renewals Playbook
Advice on Framing
As civic technologists jumping in to support states, it is important that teams are clear on the framing of their work. Without a clear well-messaged offerings state partners won’t understand - and won’t invest in - the team.
Close the gap between policy and implementation
Most states have adopted helpful policy postures for the unwinding period and have a broad range of flexibilities that should make renewals more seamless for beneficiaries. States are proud of and have conviction in the work that they have done to rapidly adopt these policy wins. Unfortunately, many of these policies remain on paper only and have not been implemented in systems and optimized to have the maximum impact for beneficiaries. As civic technologists, we are here to help states realize the goals of their good policy making through implementation and delivery support.
Deliver actionable recommendations
State Medicaid eligibility systems are inefficient in 100s of ways and states already have a list of existing priorities a mile long. Layered on top of these long standing challenges is the enormous task of Medicaid unwinding. Today, states are not interested in more to-dos or complex journey maps. States need analysis and recommendations that will make a big difference for them now. If there is long-term work to be done that is uncovered, we bring that to light when possible, but our focus is on the improvements that can be made quickly and will minimize burden on already overwhelmed state staff.
Start with the known priorities
States are reporting metrics like ex parte rate and procedural terminations, which are highly scrutinized right now. States are also hearing directly from their eligibility worker staff about the enormous workload that they are experiencing. As civic technologists, we should focus first on the data analysis and recommendations that get at the core of these well-known concerns and identify the low hanging fruit opportunities that will rapidly improve outcomes for beneficiaries, eligibility workers, and state staff. Outside of these outcomes, one state priority that civic technologists should not weigh in on (unless explicitly asked to) is system legal compliance.
Make the state the hero
In all cases, the state has the final say on what is most helpful in a crisis and civic technologists are here to surge capacity to deliver outcomes rapidly. Civic technologists can assist with rapid recommendations and steer implementation, but ultimately existing state vendors will be the ones committing lines of code. The process defined in this playbook has served previous engagements well, but ultimately we should follow the state’s lead to determine what activities are best suited for the time that they’re investing.