Back in March, TDMR published an article on the number of active THSteps Enrolled Dental Providers obtained from an open records request filed with Texas Health and Human Services. Records since 1996 Texas HHS has been compiling these figures since … Read More
Looking for a fee increase for Medicaid services? Here is another opportunity to make your voice heard. We received this email notification for Texas HHS this week. The Texas Health and Human Services Commission is working on its Legislative Appropriations … Read More
Over the years, we have published the concerns of many dentists who informed us of the various and sometimes substantial shortcomings in the performance of the various DMOs contracted by Texas HHS for dental Medicaid. There have been wrongly placed … Read More
Governor Greg Abbott announced yesterday that he has appointed Raymond C. Winter (“Ray”), former head of the Civil Medicaid Fraud division of the Office of the Attorney General, as the Inspector General for Texas HHS. He will replace Sylvia Hernandez-Kauffman, … Read More
Two weeks ago, TDMR reached out to Texas HHS to find out if a new dental director had been hired for the Medicaid CHIP program to take the place of Dr. Margaret Laccabue. And, yes, that has occurred. We were … Read More
OIG announced on their website yesterday that they were updating their self-reporting protocol for Medicaid providers. Here is what is said with a PDF copy of the protocol below. The OIG has updated the protocol providers use to voluntarily disclose … Read More
NOTE: DentaQuest had contacted us and the fees used for comparison initially were their commercial fees, not the Medicaid fee schedule available to providers and not publicly available online. We did not receive the correct fees from DentaQuest. However, we … Read More
Last month, TDMR was told that Inspector General Sylvia Hernandez Kauffman was going to be leaving OIG sometime in September. Today, we received confirmation from an OIG spokesperson that Ms. Hernandez Kauffman will be leaving the position on October 2. … Read More
The Office of Inspector General has another proposed rule on the Texas HHS “Comment on Proposed and Draft Rules” webpage entitled – “Recoupment of Overpayments Identified by Retrospective Payment Review.” This one is another addition to the Texas Administrative Code … Read More
Last Friday, Texas Health and Human Services sent an email notification that OIG was proposing a new rule (bottom of page) concerning “recoupment of overpayments identified by inspection” and wants public feedback by August 11. Public feedback Public feedback? Well, … Read More
In our last article “ADA Says Dentists Need to Accept Value Based Care as “Inevitable,” we referenced an online discussion on the Dentistry in General YouTube channel held on June 13. This passionate discussion revolved around the JADA editorial advocating … Read More
REPUBLISHED FROM THE TEXAS TRIBUNE Neelam Bohra, The Texas Tribune For seven years, Maricela Delcid has guided Texans through the Medicaid application minefield, working past language barriers and documentation issues out of a community center in Houston. But her clients … Read More
A firestorm erupted last month with an editorial published in the Journal of the American Dental Association titled “Value-based care in dentistry – Is the future here?” by Marko Vujicic, the chief economist and a vice president of the ADA’s … Read More
On June 27, we reported that the Legislature would not be increasing the Medicaid fee schedule for dentists despite the overwhelming need and the record abundance of funds in the state coffers this legislative session. The reason cited was that … Read More
A second ransomware group has claimed that it has attacked MCNA, breached its network and taken data for ransom. MCNA hacked again on June 14? The Snatch ransomware group posted on its dark web portal on June 14 that it … Read More
Considering that one of the largest DMOs in the country was hacked by the Russian ransomware group LockBit and their entire network data stolen, there has been surprisingly little media coverage about this massive data theft. The consequences of identity … Read More
With the passage of the record $321.3 billion state budget by the legislature and recent certification by the State Comptroller, all hope for a fee increase for Medicaid dentists this legislative session has evaporated. Efforts unsuccessful Efforts to educate legislators … Read More
The number of privacy law firms “investigating” MCNA for its massive data breach is growing exponentially. Here are just a few of the announcements made since our last article. Silver Golub & Teitell LLP Investigates MCNA Dental Data Breach Class … Read More
A major consumer rights law firm is now looking into the possibility of a class action lawsuit against MCNA for its huge data breach of some 9 million clients back in February, but just made public recently. Hagens Berman describes … Read More
It was announced yesterday that Emily Zalkovsky will replace Stephanie Stevens on July 1 as Medicaid and CHIP Director for Texas HHS. Ms. Zalkovsky has been deputy director since September 2020. There is no mention of why Ms. Stephens is … Read More
