Attention Providers of MaineCare Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS): Payment Details for Recruitment and Retention Payments 

Attention Providers of MaineCare Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS): Payment Details for Recruitment and Retention Payments 

 

This is a follow up to the DHHS August 4^th blog post regarding our HCBS Workforce and System Improvements Plan under Section 9817 of the American Rescue Plan Act and our November 24th, December 6th, and December 10th e-messages regarding HCBS Recruitment and Retention payments for Sections 2, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 26, 28, 29, 40, 65, 92, 93, 96, 97B, 97D, 97E, and 97F.

 

The Department will issue the first round of recruitment and retention payments with this week’s claims payment cycle on February 9, 2022. The first payment will be half (50 percent) of the total that participating agencies will receive. We currently anticipate that we will issue the second round of payments later this month.

 

Providers will receive a payment as part of the provider’s weekly payment cycle; we will indicate the payment as an “OTHER” payment on the Summary page of the remittance advice (RA). If the Department is not reimbursing a provider for any claims this week, the provider will still receive the recruitment and retention payment, but without an RA. For providers receiving an electronic 835 remittance, the invoice number will have the special prefix “BON” for “bonus payment.”

 

Participating agencies registered for the initiative in December, per the e-messages linked above. The Department will send a separate e-mail to the point of contact the provider listed during registration with instructions on how to log into a portal (different from the MIHMS HealthPAS portal) to view the total payment amount due to the provider. The e-mail will come from bonuspayments.HCBS@maine.gov.

 

Previously, we instructed providers to make bonus payments to eligible workers by March 31, 2022. We are extending that deadline to June 30, 2022. The Department will now recognize bonus payments made to eligible existing and new workers between July 1, 2021 and June 30, 2022 under this initiative. We are also extending the reporting deadline to August 1, 2022.

 

Please note that all other guidance remains as written in the previous communications. We have updated the FAQ to reflect the deadline changes.

 

Thank you for your commitment to Maine’s frontline workers and the people they support. 

 

Please contact Provider Relations Specialist Tammy Usher with questions.