New Guidance for Processing Medicaid/CHIP Renewals

To ensure that individuals who are eligible for Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance program (CHIP) retain coverage, and to assist states in their continued transition to regular renewal processing, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is providing states additional time to complete eligibility renewals, address persistent backlogs in processing redeterminations, and ensure that states achieve compliance with federal renewal timeliness requirements. This Informational Bulletin outlines the duration and conditions under which states may use an exception in the regulations to delay timely processing of renewals in “unusual circumstances” through December 31, 2025.  The Medicaid continuous enrollment provision, which had halted Medicaid disenrollments during the public health emergency, ended on March 31, 2023, and since that time, over 25 million Medicaid enrollees have been disenrolled and over 54 million have had their coverage renewed.