RIte Care allows rolling enrollment

PROVIDENCE – The R.I. Executive Office of Health and Human Services announced that it will allow families to extend RIte Care coverage immediately as opposed to waiting for their renewal notices.
Approximately 42,000 families covered by RIte Care – including an estimated 84,000 children – need to renew their health care coverage through the program by the end of 2014. These are families that last renewed in 2013 and need to use a new process to be moved from the current eligibility system to a new online system.
The R.I. Executive Office of Health and Human Services began sending renewal notices each month to cohorts of several thousand families in June and plans to continue this process of monthly notifications through the end of the year.
However, the office recently decided to allow families to renew coverage immediately instead of waiting to be notified that it was their turn to renew.
The requirement to wait until notification arrived was proving to be confusing, burdensome, or both.
Of 25,000 children and parents who were sent renewal notices at the beginning of the summer, an estimated 7,300 (29 percent) may lose coverage at the end of August because they have not renewed their coverage.
“We are very pleased with this new ‘rolling renewal’ option for families.” said Linda Katz, Policy Director at The Economic Progress Institute. “Now families don’t have to wait to receive a reminder notice.”
The Health Coverage Project is initiating an intensive outreach campaign to encourage community based organizations, health care and dental providers, mental health organizations, school nurses, and others to identify and help families renew coverage and to help families that lost coverage to re-enroll.