ED Takes Steps to Remove Medicaid Consent Burden For Districts

Today ED released its notice of proposed rulemaking on IDEA’s § 300.154 which requires districts to obtain parental consent for billing Medicaid for any IDEA related services they provide to a Medicaid eligible child.

Since 2005, AASA has voiced concerns that presenting a separate signed consent form for Medicaid reimbursement has been confusing and problematic for parents. While ED attempted to improve the initial parental consent regulation in 2013 for services that are delivered as part of a student’s individualized education program (IEP), there is still considerable confusion from parents about why they should complete the consent form and why the school needs a separate permission to bill Medicaid for healthcare services they are delivering to their child in schools. AASA and our partners documented this issue in our January 2023 report you can find here.

Now as part of the Biden Administration’s commitment to improving the Medicaid billing process for schools and expanding healthcare services for our students, OSERS has taken the step of amending their regulation which would only require districts to notify parents that they are billing Medicaid for IDEA-related services. This is a huge step forward and we are so thrilled that our advocacy efforts have paid off.

However, there is nothing ED can do to change the FERPA requirement that districts receive parental permission to bill Medicaid, and so we are turning to Congress to ask them to amend FERPA (as they did under the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act) so LEAs can bill Medicaid directly without parental consent. The next phase of our advocacy to remove barriers to LEAs billing Medicaid will be ensuring legislation in Congress is passed that will exempt PII related to Medicaid billing to be shared between LEAs and State Medicaid Agencies and contractors. Stay tuned!