Enjoy your Tuesday NCMS Morning Rounds 

March 16, 2021

Meet and Greet Medicaid Health Plan Reps

With open enrollment underway as of yesterday for Medicaid managed care, if your practice has not yet contracted with one of the pre-paid health plans — or even if you have — here is an opportunity to get your questions answered. NC Medicaid in partnership with NC AHEC will host a series of virtual Health Plan Meet and Greet Sessions beginning next Tuesday, March 23.

Representatives from each of the five contracted health plans will be available to address your concerns and questions about the state’s transition from Medicaid fee-for-service to Medicaid managed care, slated to ‘go-live’ on July 1. Sessions will be delivered live with a recording and transcript made available after each event at NC AHEC’s Medicaid Managed Care webpage. And be sure to check out that page for other learning opportunities as North Carolina gets closer to this major shift in its Medicaid program.

The first session will be for primary care and specialty providers on Tuesday, March 23 beginning with Amerihealth Caritas at 7:45 a.m., followed by Carolina Complete Health at 9:30 a.m.

Learn more and access the links for each session by scrolling to the bottom of NC AHEC’s webpage.

What Are Your Foremost Concerns?

Please take just a minute to respond to this week’s survey about what practice issues are keeping you up at night as the COVID-19 pandemic wears on. The NCMS along with the NC Medical Group Management Association and Curi started this ongoing, regular survey at the beginning of the pandemic and have collected invaluable data about the ever evolving concerns and needs of practices like yours during this unprecedented time. This helps inform our policy and advocacy work on your behalf. Thank you for responding.

This week’s survey includes questions about the COVID-19 vaccination.

TAKE THE SURVEY NOW.

Read a summary of the results culled from the 2020 surveys here.

NCMS Member Practice Selected for Equity-Oriented Primary Care Project

NCMS Board of Directors member and longtime NCMS leader Karen Smith’s, MD, family medicine practice in Raeford, NC, has been accepted into the Equity-Oriented Primary Care Innovation Collaborative.

This national project is aimed at answering the question: How can primary care delivery be sustainably redesigned to drive equitable health outcomes? The goal is that by 2023 three primary care practices and their communities will demonstrate how primary care services can redesign themselves to center on racial equity and drive measurable improvements for communities of color.

Over the course of the project qualitative data will be routinely collected from the participating practices on how mindsets, actions, and conditions change as they work towards reducing health inequities in their own communities.

Learn more about this innovative initiative here. And kudos to Dr. Smith!

In the News

Covid-19 Roundup: Pfizer’s Coronavirus Vaccine Seems Highly Effective Against P.1 Variant, Study Finds, Advisory Board, 3-12-21

Learning Opportunity

Prior Approval Institutional (Zoom), Thursday, March 25 from 9:30 a.m. – noon.
The purpose of this training is to show authorized users how to submit prior approvals (PAs) electronically via NCTracks. The prior approval functional area accepts PA data from provider-initiated information entry through the NCTracks web portal.

This course will cover:
• Submitting prior approval requests to help ensure compliance with Medicaid clinical coverage policy and medical necessity
• Inquiring about prior approval requests to determine status

Meeting Information
Follow the steps below for audio and visual access to the Zoom online training sessions:
1. Dial US Toll Free 833-568-8864
2. Enter meeting ID 160 719 1584#
3. Press the # key
4. Enter meeting passcode 7167513687#
5. From an internet browser, enter the URL https://gdit.zoomgov.com/j/1607191584?pwd=ZXZZMUlaTndnWWJFdnQ4NytTMGhkUT09

If you have policies you’d like your NCMS Board of Directors to consider, please complete the Board input form here. Thanks for reading!