Celebrating Student Creativity and Public Health: 2025 Lyme Disease Poster Contest Winners

Jun 6, 2025

The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Maine CDC) is pleased to announce the winners of the 2025 Lyme Disease Awareness poster contest. Each year, Maine students in grades K--8 help raise awareness about Lyme disease and encourage tick bite prevention across the state.

Earlier this spring, under this year's theme, "Don't Let a Tick Make You Sick" (inspired by a 2024 student submission) young artists illustrated messages promoting safe outdoor habits and tickborne disease prevention. We're excited to share the results:

Personal Support Specialist (PSS) Training

The Personal Support Specialist (PSS) training is designed for unlicensed entry-level workers. Successful completion of this course satisfies Departmental training requirements for direct care workers for certain home care programs and residential care facilities.

2019 Personal Support Specialist Curriculum

The Division of Licensing and Certification (DLC) is pleased to announce that it has completed an update of the Personal Support Specialist (PSS) curriculum. Below are several documents containing information about this new curriculum and the transition period.

Attention MaineCare Providers: Plans to Release Payments Pended During Temporary MaineCare Payment Holds – June 16, 2025

On March 5, 2025, the Department shared that it would temporarily hold certain MaineCare provider payments beginning with the payment cycle that ran on March 12, 2025. Payment withholding has continued since then utilizing the same approach. In anticipation of receiving supplemental funding for Fiscal Year 2025, provided in P.L 2025 Ch.

Rounding Rule Clarification

The purpose of this notice is to clarify the MaineCare Benefits Manual (MBM), Chapter I, Section 1, Rounding Rule. MBM Chapter I, Section 1.03-8 (J) advises how to apply the Rounding Rule when partial units are delivered.

The Rounding Rule does not apply when a service code requires a minimum amount of time that must be met or exceeded. For example, Evaluation and Management (E&M) code sets 99202-99205 and 99212-99215 are defined by a minimum time duration met or exceeded on the Date of Service (DOS) as shown in the table below.

Section 97, Private Non-Medical Institutions, Appendix F (PNMI-F): Rate Letters for Fiscal Year (FY) 2026, CR,132604

The Section 97, Appendix F, FY 2026 rate letters will be accessible on the secure Health PAS Online Portal by July 1, 2025. To view your rate letter(s), log into your Trading Partner Account and follow this pathway: File Exchange > Reports > Rate Setting Letters.    

If you have questions about accessing your letter(s), please contact Provider Services at 1-866-690-5585.     

For questions about the content of your letter(s), please contact Rate Setting directly by using the contact listed on the letter.

MaineCare Issued Annual Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) Supplemental Payments

Earlier this month, MaineCare issued supplemental payments to nine hospitals rewarding the high levels of primary care utilization for MaineCare members in their Hospital Service Areas (HSAs). The table below shows how the top eight (8) HSAs, which include nine (9) hospitals, surpassed the statewide average of 57% of MaineCare members within the HSA with a primary care visit in 2024.

Additional Impacts to Maine Medicaid (MaineCare) from Proposed Federal Changes

Jun 6, 2025

The recently passed FFY 2025 budget reconciliation bill (the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act") contains significant Medicaid (MaineCare) policy changes, including a mandatory work requirement provision for Medicaid expansion members and the removal of good faith waivers for Payment Error Rate Measurement (PERM) and Medicaid Eligibility Quality Control (MEQC) audits with error results above a certain low threshold. This document provides an overview of the potential impacts to Maine's Medicaid program.

Subscribe to