Medicaid Regional Offices Will Now Report to CMS Central Office
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced that it is integrating the Consortium for Medicaid and Children’s Health Operations (CMCHO) and the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services (CMCS) into one, unified Medicaid team. This means that the CMCHO regional office staff, which will continue to physically reside within the ten regional offices, will now be reporting directly into CMCS as the Regional Operations Group (ROG).
CMS says it’s main goals with this integration are to:
- Improve integration between the central and regional offices;
- Adopt common performance objectives and metrics across the Medicaid program; and
- Support greater integration of the work that is being done by the regions into our overall policy development efforts.
The realignment, according to CMS, will not change how states interact with the regional offices. However, while the ten field offices will still exist, they will be operationally consolidated to four offices based on the four broad regions of the country:
(1) The North Division, consisting of Chicago and Kansas City
(2) The South Division, consisting of Atlanta and Dallas
(3) The East Division, consisting of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia
(4) The West Division, consisting of Denver, San Francisco, and Seattle
These four Medicaid Field Operations Divisions will reside in the ROG and, therefore, report directly into CMCS.
FMI: The Federal Register Notice announcing the change can be found at https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2019-02400.pdf.