Colorado officials describe Medicaid ACC, RAEs and a year of integrated care code use

Colorado Medicaid officials told Washington's board their Accountable Care Collaborative (ACC) is the state's primary Medicaid delivery model and is administered by regional accountable entities (RAEs) under contracts that include per‑member payments to support primary care medical homes.

Matt Sundin, ACC program manager, said Colorado has about "1.2, 1,300,000 members enrolled in Medicaid now" and described RAEs' responsibilities for contracting with PCMPs, care coordination and passing a portion of RAE capitation through to primary care networks. He said RAEs make per‑member‑per‑month payments in the neighborhood of "$12 to $19 per member per month," with a contractual minimum that at least 33% of those payments be passed on to the primary care network; last fiscal year roughly $150 million flowed from RAEs to PCMPs.

Rachel Shuck described an integrated care policy funded with ARPA dollars (House Bill 221302) that reclassified short behavioral health psychotherapy codes into RAE capitation and added codes for brief interventions (HBAI, COCM). She said the ARPA program allocated about "$29,000,000" to expand integrated care and reported early utilization averaging about "1,300 per month" billable encounters July through March, with FQHCs among the heaviest users.

Presenters emphasized the programmatic complexity: multiple payment streams, evaluation plans for ACC phase 3, and challenges obtaining federal approvals for some access stabilization payments. Colorado officials said a full evaluation of ACC phase 3 will take multiple years but that the state has built performance standards and measurement into contracts to support longer‑term assessment.