South Dakota Medicaid is seeking hospitals and Medicaid stakeholders interested in participating in the Community Health Access and Rural Transformation (CHART) model community transformation track. South Dakota Medicaid intends to apply as a lead organization for the CHART grant funding opportunity which CMS will award to up to 15 organizations nationally. CMS will notify organizations if they are selected for the opportunity in July 2021. Participating hospitals must be in a rural area, which may be any South Dakota county besides Minnehaha, Lincoln, Pennington, or Meade. The CHART Model is intended to:
- Increase access to care for rural beneficiaries.
- Improve quality of care and health outcomes for beneficiaries.
- Increase the financial stability of rural providers.
Participating hospitals may also receive Medicare operational and regulatory flexibilities including:
- Waiver of cost sharing for Part B services.
- Waiver of certain Medicare hospital conditions of participation.
- Waiver of requirements for a 3-day inpatient stay prior to admission to a Skilled Nursing Facility.
- Waiver of the Critical Access Hospital requirements that a physician must certify that a patient is expected to be discharged or transferred within 96 hours of being admitted.
- Medicare telehealth expansion (continued post-COVID-19) including allowing a beneficiary’s home to be considered an originating site for certain services and allowing providers to engage in telehealth services with non-established patients.
- Allowing care management home visits proactively and prior to potential hospitalization and waiver of the homebound requirement for receiving these services.
Hospitals interested in participating in the CHART model and stakeholders interested in serving on the CHART advisory council should contact South Dakota Medicaid Director, William Snyder by March 1, 2021.
A DSS website describing the CHART model is available here.
