California’s Mental Health Carve-Out Preserved For Five Years, But With New Performance Transparency Requirements

On June 24, 2015, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) approved California’s request to renew its Medicaid 1915(b) Specialty Mental Health Services (SMHS) waiver, preserving the county mental health carve out structure through June 2020. This is California's first waiver renewal that CMS has approved for a five-year term. CMS has indicated an overarching concern with program integrity monitoring and compliance, and California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) agreed to several new special terms and conditions for the five-year waiver. The reforms include implementing an online mental health public report dashboard . . .