PERM Medicaid Review

Each year, Medicaid pays more than $1 billion in medical costs for low-income and vulnerable Alaskans. From children’s dental care to elders’ medical care, the joint state and federal medical assistance program provides all kinds of needed equipment and services.
Payment Error Rate Measurement, or PERM, is a review of each state’s Medicaid payments to measure billing and eligibility related errors. Groups of states are measured every three years in the staggered review.
Alaska providers did an outstanding job of responding to PERM, and Alaska had the lowest error rate of the 17 states reviewed for federal fiscal year 2008 (Oct. 1, 2007 to Sept. 30, 2008.)
The average error rate for this group was 8.71 percent; Alaska’s rate was 0.59 percent.
Each state will submit a corrective action plan by February 1, 2010, to address ways to improve its performance.
Alaska is preparing for our next PERM review, which will cover Medicaid claims paid during federal fiscal year 2011 (Oct. 1, 2010 to Sept. 30, 2011.)