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Mississippi School Boards Association and Accelify Attain Clarity on New Medicaid Claiming Policy for Coming School Year

JACKSON, Miss., Aug. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- In response to the confusion regarding changes to Mississippi Medicaid benefits for speech therapy services, The Mississippi School Boards Association and Accelify have attained clarity from the Mississippi Division of Medicaid on the new Medicaid claiming policy for the coming school year. The changes affect benefits for speech therapy services provided by school providers, which are in fact still claimable. Specifically, the new policy states that speech-language pathology services must be "medically necessary" to qualify for Medicaid benefits. Accordingly, Health Systems of Mississippi (HSM) must review all requests for speech therapy and approve them to be administered by providers. If approved, HSM will issue a Treatment Authorization Number, which is required when billing claims to Medicaid for therapy services.

"We are proud to provide information on programs that impact schools," said Dr. Michael Waldrop, MSBA's Executive Director. "MSBA is dedicated to offering Mississippi school districts the resources they need to ensure quality performance and maximum results. We are confident that our alliance with Accelify, as our Medicaid claiming partner, will ensure School District Medicaid reimbursements can still increase dramatically in spite of these recent changes."

In order to continue receiving benefits for services provided without affecting your reimbursements, providers must obtain pre-authorization before services are rendered. Accelify's Medicaid claiming systems and IEP development solution are all compatible with the recent changes, and will ensure districts can continue claiming benefits once Treatment Authorization Numbers are obtained for eligible students.

"We are pleased to work with MSBA in addressing these recent changes to Medicaid policy" said Alex Brecher, COO of Accelify. "We are committed to maximizing Medicaid revenue for our districts and are confident that these policy changes will not have a negative impact on our clients Medicaid revenue."

For more information regarding Mississippi Medicaid benefits for speech therapy, please review the following memo issued by Phyllis Williams, Deputy Administrator for Health Services in the State of Mississippi http://www.accelify.com/pdf/MS_Medicaid_Letter_Speech.pdf.

To reach an Accelify representative, please call Derek Abraham, Director of Operations, at 888-9ACCELIFY or email msinfo@accelify.com.

About MSBA

The mission of the Mississippi School Boards Association (MSBA) is to ensure quality school board performance through advocacy, technical assistance, leadership, training, and information dissemination. Exclusively for school board members in Mississippi, MSBA provides services in the belief that board members are better policy makers when they have proper information, skills and resources -- and are driven by a commitment to educating children.

About Accelify LLC:

Accelify is currently the second largest school-based Medicaid billing agent in the country. Accelify serves more than 1,000 School Districts in 9 states with more than 500,000 Special Education students. The company has offices in seven states and is headquartered in Brooklyn, NY. The company is endorsed by numerous state school board associations and other educational associations for its staff, technologies, processes and training. Accelify (and its predecessor companies) has been serving school districts since the 1990s.

SOURCE Accelify LLC