Cal. WIC § 14154 — California Code / Code wic / Division 9 / Part 3 / Chapter 7 / Article 5 / Section 14154
Section 14154
Status: in_force

(a) (1) The department shall establish and maintain a plan whereby costs for county administration of the determination of eligibility for benefits under this chapter will be effectively controlled within the amounts annually appropriated for that administration. The plan, to be known as the County Administrative Cost Control Plan, shall establish standards and performance criteria, including workload, productivity, and support services standards, to which counties shall adhere. The plan shall include standards for controlling eligibility determination costs that are incurred by performing eligibility determinations at county hospitals, or that are incurred due to the outstationing of any other eligibility function. Except as provided in Section 14154.15, reimbursement to a county for outstationed eligibility functions shall be based solely on productivity standards applied to that county’s welfare department office.

(2) (A) The plan shall delineate both of the following:

(i) The process for determining county administration base costs, which include salaries and benefits, support costs, and staff development.

(ii) The process for determining funding for caseload changes, cost-of-living adjustments, and program and other changes.

(B) The annual county budget survey document utilized under the plan shall be constructed to enable the counties to provide sufficient detail to the department to support their budget requests.

(3) The plan shall be part of a single state plan, jointly developed by the department and the State Department of Social Services, in conjunction with the counties, for administrative cost control for the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs), CalFresh, and Medical Assistance (Medi-Cal) programs. Allocations shall be made to each county and shall be limited by and determined based upon the County Administrative Cost Control Plan. In administering the plan to control county administrative costs, the department shall not allocate state funds to cover county cost overruns that result from county failure to meet requirements of the plan. The department and the State Department of Social Services shall budget, administer, and allocate state funds for county administration in a uniform and consistent manner.

(4) The department and county welfare departments shall develop procedures to ensure the data clarity, consistency, and reliability of information contained in the county budget survey document submitted by counties to the department. These procedures shall include the format of the county budget survey document and process, data submittal and its documentation, and the use of the county budget survey documents for the development of determining county administration costs. Communication between the department and the county welfare departments shall be ongoing as needed regarding the content of the county budget surveys and any potential issues to ensure the information is complete and well understood by involved parties. Any changes developed pursuant to this section shall be incorporated within the state’s annual budget process by no later than the 2011–12 fiscal year.

(5) The department shall provide a clear narrative description along with fiscal detail in the Medi-Cal estimate package, submitted to the Legislature in January and May of each year, of each component of the county administrative funding for the Medi-Cal program. This shall describe how the information obtained from the county budget survey documents was utilized and, if applicable, modified and the rationale for the changes.

(6) Notwithstanding any other law, the department shall develop and implement, in consultation with county program and fiscal representatives, a new budgeting methodology for Medi-Cal county administrative costs that reflects the impact of PPACA implementation on county administrative work. The new budgeting methodology shall be used to reimburse counties for eligibility processing and case maintenance for applicants and beneficiaries.

(A) The budgeting methodology may include, but is not limited to, identification of the costs of eligibility determinations for applicants, and the costs of eligibility redeterminations and case maintenance activities for recipients, for different groupings of cases, based on variations in time and resources needed to conduct eligibility determinations. The calculation of time and resources shall be based on the following factors: complexity of eligibility rules, ongoing eligibility requirements, and other factors as determined appropriate by the department. The development of the new budgeting methodology may include, but is not limited to, county survey of costs, time and motion studies, in-person observations by department staff, data reporting, and other factors deemed appropriate by the department.

(B) The new budgeting methodology shall be clearly described, state the necessary data elements to be collected from the counties, and establish the timeframes for counties to provide the data to the state.

(C) The new budgeting methodology developed pursuant to this paragraph shall be implemented no sooner than the 2015–16 fiscal year. The department may develop a process for counties to phase in the requirements of the new budgeting methodology.

(D) The department shall provide the new budgeting methodology to the legislative fiscal committees by March 1 of the fiscal year immediately preceding the first fiscal year of implementation of the new budgeting methodology.

(E) To the extent that the funding for the county budgets developed pursuant to the new budget methodology is not fully appropriated in any given fiscal year, the department, with input from the counties, shall identify and consider options to align funding and workload responsibilities.

(F) For purposes of this paragraph, “PPACA” means the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Public Law 111-148), as amended by the federal Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (Public Law 111-152) and any subsequent amendments.

(G) Notwithstanding Chapter 3.5 (commencing with Section 11340) of Part 1 of Division 3 of Title 2 of the Government Code, the department may implement, interpret, or make specific this paragraph by means of all-county letters, plan letters, plan or provider bulletins, or similar instructions until the time any necessary regulations are adopted. The department shall adopt regulations by July 1, 2017, in accordance with the requirements of Chapter 3.5 (commencing with Section 11340) of Part 1 of Division 3 of Title 2 of the Government Code. Beginning six months after the implementation of the new budgeting methodology pursuant to this paragraph, and notwithstanding Section 10231.5 of the Government Code, the department shall provide a status report to the Legislature on a semiannual basis, in compliance with Section 9795 of the Government Code, until regulations have been adopted.

(b) Nothing in this section, Section 15204.5, or Section 18906 shall be construed to limit the administrative or budgetary responsibilities of the department in a manner that would violate Section 14100.1, and thereby jeopardize federal financial participation under the Medi-Cal program.

(c) (1) The Legislature finds and declares that, in order for counties to do the work that is expected of them, it is necessary that they receive adequate funding, including adjustments for reasonable annual cost-of-doing-business increases. The Legislature further finds and declares that linking appropriate funding for county Medi-Cal administrative operations, including annual cost-of-doing-business adjustments, with performance standards will give counties the incentive to meet the performance standards and enable them to continue to do the work they do on behalf of the state. It is therefore the Legislature’s intent, upon an appropriation by the Legislature for this purpose, to provide appropriate funding to the counties for the effective administration of the Medi-Cal program at the local level to ensure that counties can reasonably meet the purposes of the performance measures as contained in this section.

(2) It is the intent of the Legislature to not appropriate funds for the cost-of-doing-business adjustment for the 2008–09, 2009–10, 2010–11, 2011–12, 2012–13, 2014–15, 2015–16, 2016–17, 2017–18, 2024–25, and 2025–26 fiscal years.

(d) The department is responsible for the Medi-Cal program in accordance with state and federal law. A county shall determine Medi-Cal eligibility in accordance with state and federal law. If in the course of its duties the department becomes aware of accuracy problems in any county, the department shall, within available resources, provide training and technical assistance as appropriate. This section shall not be interpreted to eliminate any remedy otherwise available to the department to enforce accurate county administration of the program. In administering the Medi-Cal eligibility process, each county shall meet the following performance standards each fiscal year:

(1) Complete eligibility determinations as follows:

(A) Ninety percent of the general applications without applicant errors and are complete shall be completed within 45 days.

(B) Ninety percent of the applications for Medi-Cal based on disability shall be completed within 90 days, excluding delays by the state.

(2) (A) The department shall establish best-practice guidelines for expedited enrollment of newborns into the Medi-Cal program, preferably with the goal of enrolling newborns within 10 days after the county is informed of the birth. The department, in consultation with counties and other stakeholders, shall work to develop a process for expediting enrollment for all newborns, including those born to mothers receiving CalWORKs assistance.

(B) Upon the development and implementation of the best-practice guidelines and expedited processes, the department and the counties may develop an expedited enrollment timeframe for newborns that is separate from the standards for all other applications, to the extent that the timeframe is consistent with these guidelines and processes.

(3) Perform timely annual redeterminations, as follows:

(A) Ninety percent of the annual redetermination forms shall be mailed to the recipient by the anniversary date.

(B) Ninety percent of the annual redeterminations shall be completed within 60 days of the recipient’s annual redetermination date for those redeterminations based on forms that are complete and have been returned to the county by the recipient in a timely manner.

(C) Ninety percent of those annual redeterminations where the redetermination form has not been returned to the county by the recipient shall be completed by sending a notice of action to the recipient within 45 days after the date the form was due to the county.

(e) The department shall develop procedures in collaboration with the counties and stakeholder groups for determining county review cycles, sampling methodology and procedures, and data reporting.

(f) On January 1 of each year, each applicable county, as determined by the department, shall report to the department on the county’s results in meeting the performance standards specified in this section. The report shall be subject to verification by the department. County reports shall be provided to the public upon written request.

(g) If the department finds that a county is not in compliance with one or more of the standards set forth in this section, the county shall, within 60 days, submit a corrective action plan to the department for approval. The corrective action plan shall, at a minimum, include steps that the county shall take to improve its performance on the standard or standards with which the county is out of compliance. The plan shall establish interim benchmarks for improvement that shall be expected to be met by the county in order to avoid a sanction.

(h) (1) If a county does not meet the performance standards for completing eligibility determinations and redeterminations as specified in this section, the department may, at its sole discretion, reduce the allocation of funds to that county in the following year by 2 percent. Any funds so reduced may be restored by the department if, in the determination of the department, sufficient improvement has been made by the county in meeting the performance standards during the year for which the funds were reduced. If the county continues not to meet the performance standards, the department may reduce the allocation by an additional 2 percent for each year thereafter in which sufficient improvement has not been made to meet the performance standards.

(2) No reduction of the allocation of funds to a county shall be imposed pursuant to this subdivision for failure to meet performance standards during any period of time in which the cost-of-doing-business increase is suspended.

(i) Notwithstanding Chapter 3.5 (commencing with Section 11340) of Part 1 of Division 3 of Title 2 of the Government Code, and except as provided in subparagraph (G) of paragraph (6) of subdivision (a), the department shall, without taking any further regulatory action, implement, interpret, or make specific this section and any applicable federal waivers and state plan amendments by means of all-county letters or similar instructions.