The Wyoming Children's Health Insurance Program, also known as Kid Care CHIP, will transition from a private insurance company to the processes in place already for Wyoming Medicaid.
This means it will be taken over by the Wyoming Department of Health. In the past, a private insurance company administered the program.
Teri Green, division of healthcare financing senior administrator at Wyoming Department of Health, said the move is in response to federal mandates that increased the cost for a vendor to manage the program. She said now the program will be under Medicaid.
"We have a broader set of benefits available in Medicaid. And so for us to be able to do that...taking things in-house that's not a big administrative lift," said Green.
She said because everything is in-house, the department can save close to $2 million on technical things like their software system.
Green said the change will expand benefits for those who use the program and may reduce the price of co-pays. But individuals won't see any other changes.
"They should be able to continue to see the same providers that they saw before the clinician for whatever services they needed. We feel like it should be a fairly seamless transition," she said.
The transition will occur on October 1.
Have a question about this story? Contact the reporter, Kamila Kudelska, at kkudlesk@uwyo.edu.
