The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services sent out notice this month to Medicaid beneficiaries that open enrollment for NC Medicaid Managed Care will end on Friday, May 14.
If you use the program and you wait until the last minute, you may be worrying about that and worrying about doing your taxes at the same time – because the new deadline for federal income taxes this year is a few days after that deadline.
The state has begun mailing out notices to encourage beneficiaries to choose a primary care provider and a health plan in preparation for the launch of NC Medicaid Managed Care on July 1 of this year.
Deputy Secretary of NC Medicaid Dave Richard stated in a press release that, if you haven’t enrolled yet, you need to get on it.
“We are pleased to see North Carolina families enrolling with health plans and providers as we prepare for the state’s transition to managed care in July. With open enrollment ending in less than a month, I want to encourage Medicaid beneficiaries who have not yet enrolled to act now to make choices about the health care that best meets their specific needs.”
Here’s how. Beneficiaries can enroll online at https://ncmedicaidplans.gov or by calling the NC Medicaid Enrollment Broker Call Center at 833-870-5500 (TTY: 833-870-5588). People also have the option of using the free NC Medicaid Managed Care mobile app that’s available in both the Google Play Store and the App Store. For those who prefer snail mail, they can use the mail-in forms that were sent to them in the enrollment packet in March.
The NC Medicaid Enrollment Broker website has a number of tools and information that should be of use to beneficiaries choosing a primary care provider and a health plan for themselves and their family.
Those tools include frequently asked questions, a chat function, the Medicaid and NC Health Choice Provider and Health Plan Lookup Tool (with four categories of search capabilities), advanced search based on specialty – and the ability to view all providers within an organization/location and by practice name.
Beneficiaries who enroll with a health plan during open enrollment – by May 14 – will have the opportunity to select a primary care provider from a list of contracted providers. If they don’t choose a health plan by the deadline, one will be assigned to them.
In the first 90 days after the coverage’s effective date, beneficiaries can change health plans for any reason. After that, unless there’s a qualifying reason, beneficiaries can’t change health plans until their next Medicaid recertification date.
