Medicaid Program; Ensuring Access to Medicaid Services; Correction

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES <SUBAGY>Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services</SUBAGY> <CFR>42 CFR Parts 431, 438, 441, 447</CFR> <DEPDOC>[CMS-2442-CN]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0938-AU68</RIN> <SUBJECT>Medicaid Program; Ensuring Access to Medicaid Services; Correction</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule; correction. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This document corrects technical and typographical errors in the final rule that appeared in the May 10, 2024 <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , entitled “Medicaid Program; Ensuring Access to Medicaid Services (referred to hereafter as the “Access final rule”). The effective date of the Access final rule is July 9, 2024. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This correction is effective July 9, 2024. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD>   Karen LLanos, (410) 786-9071, for Medicaid Advisory Committee. Jennifer Bowdoin, (410) 786-8551, for Home and Community-Based Services. Jeremy Silanskis, (410) 786-1592, for Fee-for-Service Payment. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD>   <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> In FR Doc. 2024-08363 of May 10, 2024 (89 FR 40542), there were technical errors that are identified and corrected in this correcting document. These corrections are applicable as if they had been included in the Access final rule, which is effective July 9, 2024. Accordingly, the corrections are effective July 9, 2024. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Summary of Errors</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Summary of Errors in the Preamble</HD> On page 40550, in Table 1: Provisions and Relevant Timing Information and Dates, we made errors listing the applicability dates and did not include all of the regulatory citations for the table rows that referenced the Medicaid Advisory Committee & Beneficiary Advisory Council § 431.12. On pages 40556, 40557, and 40565, we made errors listing the applicability dates. On page 40570, we made minor technical and typographical errors, including cross-references to regulatory citations and a preamble section. On page 40577, we made typographical errors in regulatory citations. On page 40578, we made a typographical error in a <E T="04">Federal Register</E> reference. On page 40580, we made a typographical error when discussing a modification to regulatory language. On page 40586, we made a typographical error in a regulatory citation. On page 40587, we made a typographical error when discussing a modification to regulatory language. On page 40594, we erroneously included an incorrect statement related to formatting when discussing a modification to regulatory language. On page 40596, we made a typographical error when discussing a modification to regulatory language. On page 40599, we made typographical errors in references to a preamble section number and a regulatory citation. On page 40611, we made typographical errors in a statutory citation and a regulatory citation. On page 40614, we made a typographical error in a statutory citation. On page 40615, we erroneously included the incorrect <E T="04">Federal Register</E> citation. On page 40616, we made minor technical errors in discussing a modification to regulatory language, including inadvertently omitting a regulatory citation. On page 40619, we erroneously omitted a word in a policy statement. On pages 40624, 40627, 40633, and 40640, we made typographical errors in regulatory citations. On page 40643, we made a typographical error in a summary of regulatory language we finalized. On page 40646, we made a typographical error in a regulatory citation. On page 40650, we made a typographical error in a reference to a preamble section. On pages 40653, 40660, and 40661, we made typographical errors in regulatory citations. On page 40662, we erroneously omitted a word and made a typographical error in a regulatory citation. On page 40671, we made typographical and minor technical errors when discussing regulatory language we finalized. On page 40673, we made typographical errors in regulatory citations. On page 40675, we made typographical errors in a regulatory citation and in references to preamble sections. On page 40727, we erroneously omitted words when discussing publication requirements. On page 40858, in the table titled “TABLE 48: Accounting Table,” we inadvertently included incorrect summary figures in the table. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Summary of Errors in the Regulation Text</HD> On page 40862, in the regulation text for § 431.12(d)(1), we listed incorrect applicability dates. On page 40863, in amendatory instruction 5, we inadvertently noted the changes to § 438.72 incorrectly. On page 40869, in the regulation text for § 441.312(c)(3)(iv), we made a typographical error. On page 40869, in the regulation text for § 441.312(g), we made a typographical error in a cross-reference. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Waiver of Proposed Rulemaking and Delay in Effective Date</HD> Under 5 U.S.C. 553(b) of the Administrative Procedure Act (the APA), the agency is required to publish a notice of the proposed rule in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> before the provisions of a rule take effect. In addition, section 553(d) of the APA mandates a 30-day delay in effective date after issuance or publication of a substantive rule. Sections 553(b)(B) and 553(d)(3) of the APA provide for exceptions from the APA notice and comment, and delay in effective date requirements. Section 553(b)(B) of the APA authorizes an agency to dispense with normal notice and comment rulemaking procedures for good cause if the agency makes a finding that the notice and comment process is impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest, and includes a statement of the finding and the reasons for it in the rule. Similarly, section 553(d)(3) of the APA allows the agency to avoid the 30-day delay in effective date where good cause is found and the agency includes in the rule a statement of the finding and the reasons for it. In our view, this correcting document does not constitute a rulemaking that would be subject to these requirements. This document corrects technical errors in the Access final rule. The corrections contained in this document are consistent with, and do not make substantive changes to, the policies that were proposed, subject to notice and comment procedures, and adopted in the Access final rule. As a result, the corrections made through this correcting document are intended to resolve inadvertent errors so that the rule accurately reflects the policies adopted in the final rule. Even if this were a rulemaking to which the notice and comment and delayed effective date requirements applied, we find that there is good cause to waive such requirements. Undertaking further notice and comment procedures to incorporate the corrections in this document into the Access final rule or delaying the effective date of the corrections would be contrary to the public interest because it is in the public interest to ensure that the rule accurately reflects our policies as of the date they take effect. Further, such procedures would be unnecessary because we are not making any substantive revisions to the final rule, but rather, we are simply correcting the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> document to reflect the policies that we previously proposed, received public comment on, and subsequently finalized in the final rule. For these reasons, we believe there is good cause to waive the requirements for notice and comment and delay in effective date. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IV. Correction of Errors</HD> In FR Doc. 2024-08363 of May 10, 2024 (89 FR 40542), make the following corrections: <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Correction of Errors in the Preamble</HD> 1. On page 40550, Table 1: Provisions and Relevant Timing Information and Dates, under Medicaid Advisory Committee (MAC) & Beneficiary Advisory Council (BAC) § 431.12, the second column, rows 1 through 3, which read: <GPH SPAN="3" DEEP="157"> <GID>ER27JN24.005</GID> </GPH> <FP>is corrected to read:</FP> <GPH SPAN="3" DEEP="171"> <GID>ER27JN24.006</GID> </GPH> 2. On page 40556, second column, first full paragraph, lines 17 through 28, the sentence that reads: “Instead of the 25 percent minimum threshold coming into effect right away, we are revising this final rule to provide in § 431.12(d)(1) that, for the period from July 9, 2024 through July 9, 2025, 10 percent of the MAC members must come from the BAC; for the period from July 10, 2025 through July 9, 2026 20 percent of MAC members must come from the BAC; and thereafter, 25 percent of MAC members must come from the BAC.” <FP>is corrected to read:</FP> “Instead of the 25 percent minimum threshold coming into effect right away, we are revising this final rule to provide in § 431.12(d)(1) that, for the period from July 9, 2025 through July 9, 2026, 10 percent of the MAC members must come from the BAC; for the period from July 10, 2026 through July 9, 2027, 20 percent of MAC members must come from the BAC; and thereafter, 25 percent of MAC members must come from the BAC.” 3. On page 40557, first column, second bullet in the second full paragraph, lines 1 through 13, the sentences that read: “Replacing the language at § 431.12 (d)(1) to clarify the timeframe for States to reach 25 percent of MAC members coming from the BAC. The new sentence will now read, “For the period from July 9, 2024 through July 9, 2025, 10 percent of the MAC members must come from the BAC; for the period from July 10, 2025 through July 10, 2026 20 percent of MAC members must come from the BAC; and thereafter, 25 percent of MAC members must come from the BAC.” <FP>are ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 28k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━