CMS Places Moratorium on Alaska Waiver Services

CMS issued Tuesday a moratorium on all new Medicaid waiver services in Alaska, effective immediately, and putting services on hold for over 1000 individuals.
A CMS team spent a week in a “focused site visit” reviewing implications of a an assessment backlog of about 2000 people waiting for service. CMS left the site visit instructing Alaska to immediately address the backlog and other issues of non-compliance and followed with a written report reiterating those instructions and additional corrective action, including the moratorium on new admissions or enrollments into Alaska’s four HCBS waiver programs. Alaska must now send a detailed report to CMS by September 1st. According to the Anchorage Daily News, the moratorium is expected to last four or five months. Thank you to Emily Ennis, Executive Director of Fairbanks Resource Agency for providing additional information on this issue.