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Reaching Eligible But Uninsured Children


Strategy 2. Enhance and Modernize Enrollment and Renewal Procedures

Beyond the core strategies, there are a number of policies that can be put into place to make enrollment and renewal procedures work more effectively, especially by relying on interconnections between different programs and technology. Some ideas include:

Use presumptive eligibility as an enrollment and outreach tool. Presumptive eligibility is an option in federal law that allows states to screen a child eligible for Medicaid and SCHIP and enroll them in coverage immediately, while a full determination is being made. This ensures children can get medical care right away and provides the family with more of an incentive to stick with the enrollment process. States can implement presumptive eligibility in different ways, including, finding new children who have not applied previously because of complicated applications or to make sure children who submit a full application are enrolled immediately.

See:
Address Medicaid citizenship requirements to help easy the burden on states and families. The federal Medicaid citizenship requirement took effect in July 2006 and requires that most U.S. citizens applying for Medicaid or renewing their coverage prove their citizenship and identity by presenting documentation. This requirement has added an extra burden on states and families applying for coverage, and resulted in a negative impact on enrollment and increased administrative costs. States can implement strategies to ease this burden such as, outreach and training, using presumptive eligibility to ensure children receive coverage while following up on the citizenship requirement, linking to vital records to match citizenship data and accepting affidavits for children's identification.

See:
Utilize technology to automate enrollment and renewal. This includes online enrollment and allowing better connections between agencies so data can be shared more readily. The more enrollment and renewal procedures can be automated the less need there is for manual data entry and paper transfers which can mean lost paperwork and more complicated enrollment processes for families.

See:
  • Pennsylvania Close-Up which takes a deeper look at the state's efforts to automate its enrollment and retention practices.

Coordinate Medicaid/SCHIP with other public programs, like school lunch or food stamps. Over 70 percent of uninsured low-income children already participate in other public programs. States can implement referral processes between the programs to identify eligible but uninsured children, combine enrollment procedures, or use information from the other programs to automatically renew Medicaid or SCHIP coverage for children already enrolled in coverage.

See:
  • Louisiana Close-Up which takes a deeper look at the state's efforts to automatically renew Medicaid coverage for children enrolled in food stamps and TANF.

  • See www.expresslaneinfo.org for more information coordinating Medicaid and SCHIP with other public programs.

For additional information on any of these strategies see the Resources section of this strategy.


Go To Next Section:

Strategy 3
Conduct Community Outreach Efforts

Go Back To:

Strategy 1
Establish a Core Set of Enrollment and Renewal Standards


Table of Contents

Summary

Where States Stand

About Eligible but Uninsured Children

Strategies

Resources

Download Brief (PDF)






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