Legislature hears bill to create online portal for community Medicaid assisters

Representative S.J. Howell introduced House Bill 601 on March 26, 2025, asking the Montana Senate Public Health Committee to authorize a Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS) online portal that would let designated “community assisters” view application status, notices and actions, report eligibility changes and update contact information for Medicaid applicants and enrollees.

The bill responds to what Howell described as widespread problems after the public health emergency ended: missed mail, long phone wait times and processing delays that led to people losing Medicaid coverage. “This is a simple straightforward way that helps people help people,” Representative S.J. Howell said in closing.

Proponents including providers and advocacy organizations said the portal would give workers who already help clients—insurance assisters, community health-center staff, and caregivers—a tool to track and address application issues quickly. Madison Detonancour, business operations manager at Helena Indian Alliance, told the committee that her organization’s insurance assister regularly encounters records showing submitted documents were later reported as not received. “If our sister could more effectively track that information through a portal, we could do more to help our patients stay covered,” Detonancour said.

Cassie Wick of Ability Montana said long delays in follow-up have left applicants waiting months for a request for additional documentation; she gave a recent example in which a March letter requested materials for an October application and required a response by April 1. “Had a community assister been granted online access, we could have tracked the application’s progress and prepared the requested items in advance,” Wick said.

DPHHS staff described the technical and federal approvals needed. The department’s IT chief operating officer said the vendor the department uses has implemented similar portals in other states and that reviewers would perform a test run prior to full deployment. The agency provided a fiscal note showing a one-time state cost of under $100,000 to build the portal; DPHHS said ongoing maintenance could be covered from existing IT funds and that the project would leverage federal Medicaid match dollars.

Committee members asked whether the portal would work as reliably as the existing legislative portal and whether the portal should already exist; Howell and DPHHS witnesses said the state only stood up the self-service portal a few years ago and that HB 601 is intended to catch Montana up with practices in other states.

The hearing closed with the sponsor asking for committee support; the bill will move through the committee process before any formal action.

Ending: DPHHS agreed to follow up on questions about why a portal was not already in place and reiterated plans for a vendor-led test run and needed federal approvals.