Medi-Cal: local educational agencies: billing.

Existing law provides for the Medi-Cal program, which is administered by the State Department of Health Care Services, under which qualified low-income individuals receive health care services. The Medi-Cal program is, in part, governed and funded by federal Medicaid Program provisions. Existing law requires the department to amend the Medicaid state plan with respect to the billing option for services by local educational agencies to ensure that schools are reimbursed for all eligible services that they provide that are not precluded by federal requirements. Existing law also requires the department to perform various activities, including, among others, an annual comparison of the school-based Medicaid systems in comparable states and efforts to improve communications with the federal government, the State Department of Education, and local educational agencies. This bill would additionally require the department to develop, jointly with the State Department of Education, a plan for identifying and providing assistance to districts that are underutilizing the Medi-Cal administrative activities (MAA) billing option, and would require the plan to address ways to collect information about how districts are reinvesting dollars generated through MAA billing and to promote promising strategies.