What Maryland Just Said: ALF Billing Is Moving Into LTSSMaryland — Set Up Your Portal Access Now

If your assisted living program bills Maryland Medicaid for waiver residents, your billing is getting a new home. The Maryland Department of Health is rolling out a Provider Portal inside LTSSMaryland — the state’s long-term services platform — and it will become the online workspace where ALF providers manage locations, staff, and (starting this fall) submit and manage claims.

The rollout is in two stages, and the smart move is to get your access set up in stage one, while the only thing at stake is a login — not a payment.

Who this applies to

Assisted living programs that bill Maryland Medicaid for Home and Community-Based Services — if you have waiver residents, this is you. (Private-pay-only facilities can sit this one out.)

What’s actually changing

The Provider Portal is LTSSMaryland’s new billing-management module for agency providers, including ALFs. It connects directly to MMIS, the state’s Medicaid claims payment system, so what you do in the portal feeds the system that pays you.

Right now you’re in the July “Early Access” release. In MDH’s own words, Early Access “opens the parts of the Provider Portal you need to get your facility and your people ready before broader ALF billing features go live.” Concretely, today you can:

• Search and view your provider locations
• Create and manage staff profiles for your team
• View announcements from MDH
• Use the built-in Help pages (training materials and contacts)

You’ll see tabs for Clients, Services, Reports, and Alerts — they’re visible but not turned on for ALF yet.

The portal has two user roles, and the split matters when you decide who gets which account:

• Admin Provider — your facility administrator. Can create, edit, and deactivate staff profiles.
• Billing Provider — your billing entry staff. Search-and-view only; no edit rights.

The dates that matter

• Now (July 2026): Early Access is live. Account setup and staff profiles are open.
• Wednesday, July 29, 2026, 10:00 AM: MDH is holding a live Q&A Information Session for ALF providers (Google Meet link, or dial +1 317-961-0800, PIN 165 978 854#).
• October 2026: the Fall release turns on the real machinery — Services/Billing (submit and manage claims for ALF services), Clients (residents and their service plans), Plan of Service, Reports (service, claim, and remittance reports), and Alerts.

What to do about it

1. Pick your Admin Provider — the person at your facility who will own portal access and create everyone else’s profiles. If your agency has no portal account at all yet, call the LTSS Helpdesk at 1-855-463-5877 (1-855-4MD-LTSS), 8 AM–6 PM Eastern, or email [email protected]. They set up the first Admin account; the Admin creates the rest.
2. Log in and verify your facility appears. The portal is at ltss.health.maryland.gov. Your location must carry the “Assisted Living Facility” attribute in the system — if you search and your location doesn’t show up, that’s a Helpdesk call, and you want it fixed months before a claim depends on it.
3. Set up staff profiles now for your administrator and billing staff, with the right role for each. Remember: Billing Provider accounts can’t edit anything — that’s by design, not a glitch.
4. Get on the July 29 Q&A with your billing person. Ten o’clock Wednesday morning, questions answered live by the division that runs provider claims.
5. Watch the portal’s Announcements page (there’s an ALF-specific category) and put October on your calendar — that’s when claims move, and you don’t want your first login to happen the week a payment is due.

The fine print

This comes from MDH’s Office of Long Term Services & Supports provider email of July 27, 2026, and the Provider Portal User Manual for ALF Providers (Early Access Release, v1.0, July 2026) — the session recording and manual are linked from that email. Program and policy questions go to [email protected].

One point of easy confusion: this is separate from the MPRIME transition. MPRIME replaces ePREP for provider enrollment and revalidation — also landing in October 2026. The LTSSMaryland Provider Portal is where you’ll work your billing. Two different systems, one busy fall. If you missed the revalidation trap in the MPRIME change, read that one too.

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The Care Insider is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Maryland Department of Health or the Office of Health Care Quality. This is operator-to-operator plain-language explanation, not legal or billing advice — always read the original guidance and confirm specifics with MDH.