Tagged: Medicaid Managed Care

After two years of interim leadership, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services has a permanent Medicaid Commissioner. 

Lawrence Kissner is the current CEO of Magnolia Health Plan, a managed care operator in Mississippi. He will start as Kentucky's new Medicaid commissioner July 1. 

The move continues the overhaul Secretary Audrey Haynes began when she took her job in April. 

Last year, Kentucky state officials approved plans to bring on more regional Managed Care Operators, MCOs, to administer the state’s Medicaid program, which has been facing significant budget shortfalls.

The process of opening the Louisville area to Medicaid competition is underway.

Passport Health Plan has run Medicaid in the area for 15 years, but the state has been ordered by the federal government to allow at least one more private operator to do business in the region.

Passport officials say they will bid for the contract and requests were sent to other potential bidders this week.

The CEO of Kentucky’s largest private Medicaid operator says massive financial losses and bad data are to blame for the problems with managed cared in Kentucky.

For weeks, CoventryCares has sought to terminate or revise its contracts with more than a dozen healthcare providers so the company would pay lower reimbursement rates when doctors treat Medicaid patients. And in a meeting before the interim joint Health and Welfare Committee today, CEO Michael Murphy said his company's actions were motivated by losses. 

Kentucky lawmakers will get their first chance tomorrow to ask a private Medicaid operator why it’s having so much trouble negotiating contracts with healthcare providers.

The CEO of CoventryCares will speak to lawmakers at a meeting of the Interim Joint Health and Welfare Committee. Coventry has been fighting with the Eastern Kentucky hospital network Appalachian Regional Healthcare over reimbursement rates and a new contract.