State asks treatment providers what grant-funded care could be billed to Medicaid

Alaska's Division of Behavioral Health will ask mental health and addiction treatment providers at a Nov. 18 virtual meeting which of the services they now pay for with division grants could be billed to Medicaid instead.

The questions focus on the division's Comprehensive Behavioral Health Treatment and Recovery grants, which pay for outpatient treatment, residential and withdrawal management services, and peer support.

The division also wants to know what makes billing Medicaid harder than using grants, how providers use their grant money now and how they'd set priorities for grant spending if Medicaid covered every service it could.

The division has told grant recipients before to bill Medicaid first when a service qualifies. "Department funds are the payer of last resort," a 2024 grant request for Ketchikan outpatient services said.

The meeting comes months after the division paused a planned overhaul of its behavioral health grants. In a May 14 letter, it held off on new grant programs and kept the existing outpatient and residential treatment grants going for two more years, citing provider feedback about readiness for more changes and pending Medicaid rate updates.