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Minnesota’s Medical Assistance Housing Stabilization Services program will end on Friday, Oct. 31.
In August, DHS announced its interest in terminating the program due to widespread fraud. The termination recently received final approval (PDF) from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Launched in 2020, Housing Stabilization Services was a Medical Assistance benefit designed to help seniors and people with disabilities, including substance use disorders, find and keep housing. Medical Assistance is Minnesota’s Medicaid program.
“It’s upsetting that we had to take this step to stop criminals from taking advantage of services intended to help people,” said temporary Human Services Commissioner Shireen Gandhi. “We know that Housing Stabilization Services truly filled an important gap for so many participants. We’re working closely with partners to help them connect people to other services wherever possible.”
DHS is coordinating with counties, Tribes, Urban Indian organizations and managed care organizations to identify resources to help people impacted by the end of Housing Stabilization Services. Many of those resources are available at mn.gov/dhs/housing-resources.
More information is in a department news release.
Governor Tim Walz announced this week he has ordered a third-party audit of billing for 14 high-risk Medicaid services. Payments for these programs will be paused for up to 90 days in order to detect suspicious billing activity and scrutinize the use of public funds.
Using funding passed during the 2025 legislative session, the Department of Human Services (DHS) has contracted with Optum, which will analyze Medicaid fee-for-service claims data and flag potential issues for DHS review. Optum’s analytics will identify irregularities such as missing documentation, unusually high billing patterns, or inconsistencies suggesting that a claim may not meet program requirements. The new layer of review will safeguard Medicaid dollars before payments go out.
“We cannot effectively deliver programs and services if they don’t have the backing of the public’s trust. In order to restore that trust we are pumping the brakes on 14 programs that were created to help the most disadvantaged among us, yet have become the target of criminal activity,” said Governor Walz. “If you attempt to defraud our public programs and steal taxpayer dollars out from under the people who need them most – you will be stopped, and you will be held accountable.”
“We’re taking a systematic approach to finding and stopping fraud,” said temporary Human Services Commissioner Shireen Gandhi. “Adding outside review before payments go out and increasing safeguards for these high-risk services will preserve resources necessary to serve Minnesota’s children, people with disabilities and older adults.”
DHS designated the 14 Medicaid services as high-risk based on programmatic vulnerabilities, evidence of fraudulent activity, or data analytics that revealed potentially suspicious patterns, claim anomalies or outliers.
Outside review of payments may result in longer wait times before providers are paid, while their claims undergo review. However, the state will still meet federal rules requiring payment within 90 days.
More information is in the Governor's news release.
Medicaid providers who have not billed for services in more than a year will be disenrolled from Minnesota’s Medicaid program, as the Department of Human Services tightens oversight.
The first round of disenrollment began Oct. 15, when roughly 800 providers were disenrolled. Impacted providers were certified prior to April 1, 2024, and have not billed since that date. This round of disenrollments did not include 621 inactive housing stabilization services providers because the program is ending Oct. 31.
“We must reduce risk and increase efficiencies wherever we can,” said temporary Human Services Commissioner Shireen Gandhi.
More details are in a department news release.
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