How ready is your organization to serve as a JI ECM Provider?

Another reminder before this week’s issue: office hours for JI ECM Providers is next Monday, August 3rd at 2pm-3pm. It’s free and informal. If you’d like to join, you can register here. See you then!

Welcome back to The Reentry Read!

DHCS has a readiness assessment for correctional facilities. County behavioral health agencies have one too. JI ECM Providers never got one, and there’s no convenient way for them to check their own readiness.

So, I built one! It’s called the JI ECM Provider Readiness Assessment, it’s free to use, and you can find it here.

Readiness for JI ECM work comes down to three areas, and the Assessment walks through each one, with a particular focus on pre-release and reentry services.

1) Medi-Cal Provider Eligibility and Enrollment. The first hurdle is whether your organization can enroll as a Medi-Cal Provider with the state through the Provider Application and Validation for Enrollment (PAVE) portal. This is especially tricky for Community-Based Organizations (CBOs), which we covered in Issue 3.

2) County and Managed Care Plan Contracting. The second hurdle is Managed Care Plan (MCP) contracting, and specifically alignment across the plans in each county where your organization operates.

3) Operational Readiness. The final component does not affect eligibility, but it can strengthen, or weaken, your organization’s ability to deliver and get reimbursed for services. Operational readiness, which lays the foundation for sustainability, includes staffing, service provision, eligibility verification, documentation, and billing.

Upon completion of the Readiness Assessment, you’ll receive a readiness summary and downloadable report. Each major component is scored: ready, in progress, or not ready. Identified gaps are listed along with a recommended next step. The entire Assessment takes just a few minutes to complete.

As a reminder, this is not a state-approved assessment. It reflects my own interpretation of published DHCS guidance and my experience working with JI ECM Providers. It provides no guarantees of Medi-Cal enrollment, MCP contracting, or reimbursement. But it will give you a clear, structured picture of where your organization stands today, and what to work on next.

DHCS decides when a correctional facility is ready. Your organization’s readiness is yours to determine.

If you already serve, or are interested in serving, as a JI ECM Provider, please take the Readiness Assessment! If you try it out, I’d love to hear about your experience.

As always, please feel free to reply with feedback or requests for future topics.

Thanks!

Rebekah

The Reentry Read is intended for educational purposes and reflects interpretation of published DHCS guidance. It is not legal, compliance, or regulatory advice, and provides no guarantees of Medi-Cal enrollment, managed care plan contracting, or reimbursement outcomes.