{"id":570505,"date":"2026-04-07T21:24:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T21:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/570505\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T21:24:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T21:24:12","slug":"after-governor-approves-idaho-health-agency-announces-restored-medicaid-mental-health-programs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/570505\/","title":{"rendered":"After governor approves, Idaho health agency announces restored Medicaid mental health programs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BOISE (Idaho Capital Sun<\/a>) \u2014 After the governor signed into law a bill to reinstate cut Medicaid mental health programs, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare announced it would start reimbursing providers for the full services.<\/p>\n

In a Medicaid information release<\/a> posted Friday, Idaho Medicaid Administrator Sasha O\u2019Connell wrote the agency would immediately resume reimbursing for the Assertive Community Treatment program, a mobile treatment program designed to serve people with severe mental illness who have struggled in routine treatment settings, and peer support services, which help people navigate mental health treatment.<\/p>\n

The move came a day after Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed<\/a> Senate Bill 1446<\/a>, which restores funding for the programs that an Idaho Medicaid contractor, Magellan, cut<\/a> after the governor\u2019s order for budget cuts last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cProviders may immediately begin working with Magellan, United Healthcare, and Molina to restore services,\u201d O\u2019Connell wrote. \u201cThese managed care contractors will work with providers to reach out to individual members who had been receiving (Assertive Community Treatment) and Peer Support before their elimination.\u201d<\/p>\n

In less than three months since an Idaho Medicaid contractor cut a mobile treatment program for people with severe mental illness, four patients died<\/a>, the Idaho Capital Sun reported. In the 18 months before the cut, providers say just one patient died.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Magellan\u2019s Idaho Executive Director David Welsh said \u201cMagellan supports the State of Idaho\u2019s decision to reinstate Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) services.\u201d<\/p>\n

Access Behavioral Health Services co-owner Laura Scuri told the Idaho Capital Sun on Monday that providers are working with Magellan to understand how the process to reinstate the programs will work, but hopes it is restored within the next week.<\/p>\n

The letter from the state\u2019s Medicaid administrator, Scuri said, is \u201cacknowledgement that we need to start moving as quickly as possible. But these are massive systems that have to reconfigure some stuff to get us back, is what we\u2019re being told. And we have to bring staff in, onboard. Most of us have to hire one or two positions, so it\u2019ll be, before it\u2019s up running and perfect, it\u2019ll be about a month. But we\u2019re going to try to put them together as quickly as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t \t \t \t=htmlentities(get_the_title())?>%0D%0A%0D%0A=get_permalink()?>%0D%0A%0D%0A=htmlentities(‘For more stories like this one, be sure to visit https:\/\/www.eastidahonews.com\/ for all of the latest news, community events and more.’)?>&subject=Check%20out%20this%20story%20from%20EastIdahoNews” class=”fa-stack jDialog”> \t <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOISE (Idaho Capital Sun) \u2014 After the governor signed into law a bill to reinstate cut Medicaid mental…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":["post-570505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}