NORTH DAKOTA (KXNET) — Health and Human Services (HHS) is urging North Dakotans who get ND Medicaid renewal forms (or review forms) to complete and return them to a human service zone within 30 days to make sure they still have coverage if they still qualify.

According to a news release, about 13,100 Medicaid members in North Dakota were due for renewal on May 31, and only one in three members actually returned the form.

This means that 4,400 people were disenrolled on the same day, even though they may still qualify for coverage.

“Our goal is to maintain coverage for all people who remain eligible with a particular emphasis on children and people with disabilities,” said HHS Interim Medical Services Division Director Krista Fremming. “To a certain extent, there have always been Medicaid members who have lost coverage because they did not return paperwork needed to determine if they still qualified. We want to take this opportunity to make sure members who qualify can still access health care when they need it.”

The May data also showed that seven in 10 members who did return the renewal form still qualified for coverage.

The goal of HHS is to make sure that people don’t lose Medicaid coverage because they didn’t verify their information.

People who are disenrolled have 90 days to return their renewal form and provide the required information, and if they qualify after a review, ND Medicaid will back-date their coverage to when they were disenrolled.

North Dakota has already implemented an auto-renewal process to make it easy to verify if a person still qualifies for coverage using federal income data and other approved data sources.

A person will get a renewal form if ND Medicaid cannot auto-renew their coverage.

Forms are mailed out around the 20th of each month and are due within 30 days, they must be completed and returned online through the Self-Service Portal, by mail or email, or in person at a human service zone.

HHS has a new webpage with more information about Medicaid renewals and how members can update their contact information, so they can get important information about coverage.

People who no longer qualify for ND Medicaid have other health coverage options through the federal Health Insurance Marketplace. ND Navigators can offer free application assistance online.