Last week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released a new State Medicaid & Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) Toolkit for Children’s Behavioral Health Services and the Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic, and Treatment (EPSDT) Requirements.
This toolkit was developed to support states in implementing Federal EPSDT requirements and includes actionable strategies and state examples across key areas such as early intervention, care coordination, telehealth, workforce capacity, and network adequacy. It also highlights approaches states have used to expand access in less-populated areas — for example, coverage of behavioral health services delivered via telehealth and network adequacy standards that account for travel distances in rural and frontier regions.