Morris County, NJ Launches Medicaid Eligibility Pilot

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Morris County, New Jersey is launching a new Medicaid eligibility pilot aimed at cutting back on the time it takes to make eligibility decisions. The county will be working with Xerox on the project – first for the state in terms of outsourcing relationships.

As of Oct. 15, there were 33,253 Medicaid cases in Morris County in 2015. Each of these cases must be recertified on an annual schedule to ensure they still qualify for the earned benefit. As a result of Medicaid expansion in 2014, county caseloads increased by more than 50 percent statewide, including in Morris County. County welfare agencies struggled to keep pace with increased volume.

Xerox will take on application processing in order to cut back on backlogs and will do so without hiring additional public sector employees. Xerox already acts as New Jersey’s health benefits coordinator. Only long-term care and emergency applications will remain with existing county caseworkers.

Individuals can currently apply for Medicaid through an online form available on the county website. That form will remain the same but the application will be sent directly to Xerox. Caseworkers that had been handling Medicaid eligibility will now focus on clearing up application backlogs in SNAP, TANF and other earned benefit programs.

“For the past several years, the economic climate has been fraught with challenges for government, particularly for the Human Services system,’’ said Morris County Director of Human Services Jennifer Carpinteri. “With the implementation of Medicaid expansion and changes in various funding streams that support some of our most critical services, we must look at our infrastructure to find efficiencies while continuing to provide high quality services.”