CARES Provider Relief Fund - Can Schools Participate?
Mid-July, this question was posted to the School Medicaid group on Facebook: "Does the Medicaid Cares Act Provider Relief Fund apply to schools?"
The federal CARES Provider Relief Fund includes $175 billion in relief funds to hospitals and healthcare providers due to loss of revenue attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic. What about public schools that participate in their states' School Medicaid program? Are they eligible? In a June 15 phone call with NAME, CMS said that schools were not excluded from this program. Have any school districts applied and received funds? Is it relatively easy to apply. The answers are "Yes" and "Yes."
Renee Evans is the Chief School Business Official for the Tri-County Special Education organization in south central Illinois. Renee posted the original question and then followed up - tenaciuosly - in order to pursue any funding that her constituent school districts could recover.
She found that public school districts that participated in the School Medicaid program COULD participate in the program. She also found that the application process was not as daunting as it could have been. Although the application is geared towards businesses and hospitals, there's nothing in the application that her school districts couldn't complete.
As part of a cooperative service, Renee filed the applications on behalf of her constituent districts and reports that, so far, 16 of the 18 applications have been approved and those districts have received their funds via ACH. She is still waiting to hear back on the other applications.
Although the program will only reimburse a maximum of 2% of lost program revenue for the months of March and April, it's revenue that's worth the application process. We asked Renee about how long it took her to complete an application, "Once I knew what I was doing, about 15 minutes."
The deadline for this program applications has been extended until Friday August 28, 2020.
Those interested in the application process can find information here: https://cares.linkhealth.com/#/
