MassHealth Citizenship and Identity Requirements Update

As previously reported, MassHealth began requiring proof of citizenship and identity in July 2006 to comply with a new federal Medicaid requirement. This requirement has been in effect since then for those on MassHealth and Commonwealth Care. It is not a requirement for Health Safety Net. It is also not a requirement for anyone who is not a citizen, since they would obviously be unable to show such proof.

A few important updates to this process:

1) Electronic matching to birth certificates: MassHealth now offers an automated match process with Vital Records to obtain birth certificates for anyone born in Massachusetts. However, an applicant must request this service; it is not automatic. The Virtual Gateway and the paper MBR now contain sections where a Massachusetts-born applicant can request this assistance. See the provider bulletin at this link for more information. http://www.mass.gov/Eeohhs2/docs/masshealth/bull_2008/aih-135.pdf

2) Disenrollment of members with no proof: Until now, MassHealth has not terminated any existing members for being unable to obtain proof of citizenship and identity as long as the member was "continuing to attempt to obtain" this documentation. MassHealth is now going to begin to disenroll current members who have not been able to produce this proof. Apparently, most of these are MassHealth Standard members, who would then be downgraded to Health Safety Net.

What can advocates do?

Watch for patients you have been working with who are in this situation and notify them that they are going to need to provide this information to maintain coverage.

The state is NOT going to automatically check these against the Vital Records database, but if your patient was born in MA, you can complete the MBR supplemental form and send it in to MassHealth, requesting that they do an automatic match. (I'm assuming most of these were NOT born in MA, though, or it would have been easier to obtain their documentation.)

-From e-mail “UPDATE - MassHealth Citizenship and Identity Requirements” Kim Simonian, MPH, Community Benefit Programs, Partners HealthCare, September 26, 2008 .

 

10/08