Providers Should Submit Health Care Worker Bonus Claims Without Delay
Employers participating in the Health Care Worker Bonus (HWB) program are reminded that the submission portal is scheduled to close on May 1st. To maintain compliance, providers should submit bonus claims for eligible employees who worked during the entirety of the third vesting period, from Oct. 1, 2022 through March 31, 2023, before the May 1st deadline. According to recent guidance, providers are able to submit late claims from prior vesting periods during this submission period as well. Information on that process as well as on returning any overpayments is available here. Instructions on correcting prior claims are provided in the HWB Portal End User Guide available once you have logged into the HWB Portal.
Payments for claims submitted during the special submission period in February are scheduled to be included in Medicaid payment cycle 2382, which has a check release date of May 3rd. The February submission period was specifically designed for those workers who were made newly eligible for the program by the November 2022 expansion (e.g., security guards for all provider types, workers who qualified under the “All Other Health Care Support Workers” category for Assisted Living Programs).
Please keep in mind that an employer may make no more than two bonus payments to an individual employee, and a worker may receive no more than $3,000 in total bonus payments. The program website is here, the submission portal is here, and the Frequently Asked Questions document that represents the primary guidance for the program is available here.
Contact: Darius Kirstein, dkirstein@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8841