Separate agency to handle Medicaid

Columbus Dispatch

COLUMBUS

Ohio’s 2 million-plus poor and disabled residents now have a separate agency to handle the state’s $18.8 billion Medicaid program, which provides them tax-funded health insurance.

The long-anticipated break from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services will take effect July 1, 2014.

“This is change that is overdue,” said Greg Moody, director of the Governor’s Office of Health Transformation. “It has been recommended by separate study commissions in 2005 and 2006 but never acted on.”

The move, he added, will help Medicaid “run better and more efficiently.”

“We are not expecting any layoffs, and we will work hard to make the process as seamless and transparent as possible for staff and stakeholders.”

The Office of Ohio Health Plans, which operates Medicaid, employs 388 and has essentially operated as a Cabinet-level agency under Gov. John Kasich’s administration. The Department of Job and Family Services has an additional 3,280 non- Medicaid employees who operate the state’s public assistance, child protection, work-force development and unemployment compensation programs.

“In the past 18 months, we have passed legislation and begun implementing comprehensive reforms to improve the quality of health care for individuals served in the Medicaid program, saving the state more than $1.5 billion in the process,” said Medicaid Director John McCarthy.

“But we have more work to do to create a Medicaid program that is easier for Ohioans to navigate, improves health outcomes and is fiscally sustainable,”’ he said.

The Department of Job and Family Services was created early in the administration of Gov. Bob Taft, who took office in 1999.

He merged the Ohio Department of Human Services with the Ohio Bureau of Employment Services in what he said was a move to improve efficiency.