What Providers Need to Know About the CMS Access Rule

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently released the final Ensuring Access to Medicaid Services rule (commonly referred to as the Access Rule). It includes new requirements for direct care workforce compensation, waiting lists, timeliness of access to approved home and community-based services (HCBS), critical incident management to improve health, safety, and service quality, person-centered planning, quality measurement, and more.

The Access Rule includes a number of requirements that directly affect provider organizations. This presentation provides an overview of the Access Rule and highlights the challenges and opportunities providers are likely to experience as states move forward with their efforts to meet the requirements of the new rule.

About the Presenters

Craig Escudé, President, IntellectAbility
Dr. Craig Escudé is a board-certified Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American Academy of Developmental Medicine and President of IntellectAbility. He has more than 20 years of clinical experience providing medical care for people with IDD and complex medical and mental health conditions, serving as medical director of Hudspeth Regional Center in Mississippi for most of that time. While there, he founded DETECT, the Developmental Evaluation, Training, and Educational Consultative Team of Mississippi. He is the author of “Clinical Pearls in IDD Healthcare” and developer of the “Curriculum in IDD Healthcare,” an eLearning course used to train clinicians on the fundamentals of healthcare for people with IDD, and the host of the IDD Health Matters Podcast.

Lorene Reagan, Strategic Consultant, IntellectAbility
Lorene Reagan, RN, MS has 30+ years of experience providing supports for people with IDD, their families and their caregivers. Ms. Reagan served as Bureau Chief for IDD services and as Senior Medicaid Policy Administrator with the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, was the Manager of Care Management for a Boston based Medicaid Managed Care Organization and, as a consultant, provided clinical and policy supports to state Medicaid programs across the nation. Ms. Reagan is passionate about educating and informing those responsible for protecting, maintaining and restoring health, wholeness and a good quality of life for people with IDD.