The Oklahoma Health Care Authority (OHCA) board heard updates on Oklahoma’s managed Medicaid program, SoonerSelect, and the agency’s 2025 legislative asks, and voted to revise a policy on payment and coverage for abortions to align with state law during its Wednesday meeting.
Oklahoma Medicaid Director Traylor Rains announced OHCA made an award to global professional services company Accenture to serve as a SoonerSelect monitoring and oversight vendor.
Rains said OHCA is getting hundreds of reports from each of the SoonerSelect contracted entities, which often come in Excel spreadsheets. He said OHCA has a team analyzing these reports, but they can’t glean many insights at this point because they are so voluminous.
“What is central [to bring] to the table is working alongside our team to build out a technology that will ingest those reports, validate them, aggregate them, give us actionable insights that our team can quickly act on, rather than poring through hundreds of Excel spreadsheets,” Rains said.
OHCA had a kickoff for the project on Monday. Rains estimates it will take several months to build and get things operational, but OHCA is “really excited to start that work.”
“We were very intentional about how we built the contract on this so as to not create a long-term reliance on a third party vendor, but really to come in, help prop up the technology, get the staff used to that technology, create internal capacity and then have a defined exit plan while leaving the technology in a little support body for us,” Rains said.
OHCA Chief of Staff Christina Foss also provided an update on the agency’s legislative asks for the 2025 session, which begins Feb. 3. Foss said the agency’s “number one focus” for this session will be on the budget. She said it has a large budget request to maintain current operations amid a change in the state's Federal Medical Assistance Percentage.
“We've seen that a lot of agencies have some pretty big requests this year, and so we'll look forward to budget hearings and explaining our needs,” Foss said.
Foss said the agency has five legislative requests, including two carryover bills.
One carryover bill requests changes to OHCA’s reimbursement methodology for nursing homes. Foss said the new methodology would emphasize quality and enhance the agency’s pay-for-performance program. It would also establish a price-based methodology for new dollars coming into the system.
Another would establish a paid family caregiver program for children with complex care needs served at home.
One bill would update the OHCA Medical Advisory Committee, which was established to advise the agency on health and medical care services. The change is based on new federal requirements, and OHCA needs to ensure 25% of the committee is also represented on its Member Advisory Task Force.
The bill also would add a spot for a representative from a managed care plan or association representing managed care plans.
The OHCA board had eight emergency rules to consider during its meeting. It pulled one abortion-related revision out of the package of emergency rules to vote on it separately.
The agency’s current policy on payment and coverage for abortions includes that abortion services can be accessed in instances of rape, incest and when a pregnant person’s life is in danger. The proposed revision brings the agency into compliance with state law by removing exceptions for rape and incest.
Abortion is banned in Oklahoma, with the only exception being to save the life of a pregnant person. The change was approved by seven yes votes, with two abstentions from board members John Christ and Dr. Jeffrey Cruzan.
According to the meeting agenda, Governor Kevin Stitt has until Feb. 1 to approve or disapprove the agency’s emergency rules upon its submission for gubernatorial review.
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