The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) approved a new public health emergency section 1115 demonstration, “North Carolina Hurricane Helene Public Health Emergency Section 1115(a) Demonstration.” Under this demonstration, North Carolina will receive expenditure authority to provide retainer payments to 1905(a) personal care service providers. The retainer payments seek to serve as a source of relief for providers experiencing decreases in utilization, temporary practice closures, or other circumstances that limit their ability to provide covered services to Medicaid beneficiaries. Additionally, this demonstration provides expenditure authority to provide Healthy Opportunities Pilots (HOP) services for beneficiaries who resided, and were approved for HOP services, in the affected HOP region on the day the PHE related to Hurricane Helene began (September 25, 2024), but have since been displaced from the HOP region. This change will ensure that previously eligible HOP beneficiaries will be able to continue to receive the HOP services they are eligible for, regardless of whether they temporarily evacuated the pilot region area due to the hurricane.
With this approval, the demonstration is effective retroactively to September 25, 2024, the first date of the PHE in North Carolina resulting from Hurricane Helene, and continues through March 23, 2025, the final date of the PHE. Today’s approval and other administrative documents can be found on the Medicaid.gov demonstration page.
