Payments to providers are finally starting to come in from the Managed Care Organizations that are in charge of Iowa’s Medicaid programs.

Guthrie County Public Health Administrator Jotham Arber says they provide home health as their only outreach program that they deal with the MCO’s. He points out that because they are a county entity, they don’t have to worry too much about getting payments from the MCO’s because the county tax dollars have already been approved for their services.

“As long as the money comes in we can wait four, five, six months (to receive payment). We don’t like to wait four, five, six months, it looks really bad on our budget sheet. But because of that tax net, because we are the safety net of the county, those tax dollars are there.”

They have started receiving payments earlier this month from when the privatization of Medicaid started in April.

Arber says they’ve also experienced issues trying to figure out the different coding systems that each MCO requires, but he feels they have a better handle on it now and will hopefully get better timely payments in the future.