Here’s the latest on the new budget tool.

Comments about the first preview of the new tool were due last week. Lots of you sent in comments. You had an impact!

The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare has postponed the timeline. The Department wants more time to read all your comments. We were supposed to get a new version of the proposed service mixes last Friday (March 5). But now that timeline is pushed back.

The next step is called “pre-implementation review.” What is pre-implementation review? The Department will look at records about 100 specific people on Medicaid in Idaho. The Department will decide whether the new tool gives those 100 people the right budget.

Pre-implementation review was going to start on March 8. But the Department postponed it until March 22. The Department is taking more time to read all the comments it got last week.

We asked the Department to actually talk to the 100 people it chose for pre-implementation review. The Department cannot know whether the new budgets are right for those 100 people without hearing what they think. The Department told us before that there should be “nothing about us, without us” when it comes to people with disabilities. But the Department still has not agreed to let the 100 people know that they were chosen for pre-implementation review.

Let the Department know what you think! You can send them an email to HCBSwaivers@dhw.idaho.gov to share your opinion.

Watch this space and be sure you subscribe to the email list for updates. We will share new info when we have it.