Can Limited-Licensed Social Workers Bill Ingham Health Plan?

Can a limited-licensed social worker provide covered Ingham Health Plan services?

Yes, conditionally. Ingham Health Plan’s current-linked July 2025 Behavioral Health Benefit Description expressly includes limited-licensed bachelor’s or master’s social workers working under a fully licensed master’s social worker. The setting must be an IHP-participating primary care practice or outpatient behavioral health clinic, and the service must fit the clinician’s lawful scope and the plan’s limited benefit.

What does that mean for an LLMSW providing therapy?

The same benefit document includes limited ongoing outpatient psychotherapy, including 90832, 90834 and 90837. This is a potential covered-service pathway for an appropriately supervised limited-licensed master’s social worker, not automatic approval for every visit. Ongoing services require a PCP referral, medical necessity, an IHP-participating provider approved for ongoing behavioral health, and the specified screening for other community benefits or coverage.

Do all listed social workers have the same clinical scope?

No. The benefit also lists licensed bachelor’s social workers and supervised limited-licensed bachelor’s social workers among eligible professionals. That does not make bachelor’s-level practice interchangeable with master’s-level clinical psychotherapy. Confirm the specific service is within the clinician’s license and supervision requirements; do not use the shared benefit list to expand a person’s clinical scope.

Which benefit limits matter?

The benefit distinguishes screening and brief intervention from limited ongoing treatment. Its July 2025 schedule lists annual limits, including a 15-unit annual limit for the therapy codes grouped in Table 2; diagnostic evaluation has a separate one-unit annual limit. Services beyond those limits require authorization before they are rendered. The provider must retain medical-necessity justification and documentation of attempts to refer the member to other available community resources. This is not unrestricted weekly therapy coverage.

Whose NPI belongs on the claim?

The reviewed behavioral-health benefit establishes supervised eligibility but does not supply a special rendering-NPI or modifier rule for limited-licensed social workers. Do not infer that the fully licensed supervisor should replace the treating clinician on the claim. Confirm the applicable claim-field instructions for the participating arrangement before filing.

Is this Michigan Medicaid or a general student rule?

Neither. IHP describes itself as a local access-to-care program for uninsured Ingham County residents, not insurance. Its use of Medicaid fee schedules or claim edits does not make this a statewide Medicaid permission. The reviewed pathway names limited licenses and a fully licensed master’s social-work supervisor; it does not establish coverage for every unlicensed student, graduate, counselor associate or marriage-and-family trainee.

Sources and dates

Reviewed October 30, 2026. The live IHP provider-materials index links the July 2025 behavioral-health benefit and July 2023 general provider manual. The benefit describes access beginning July 1, 2021; neither its July 2025 update nor this review date is treated as the start of a new license-specific permission. The current claims page identifies IHP’s payer ID as 38343, which identifies the program rather than establishing clinician eligibility.

IHP current provider materials

July 2025 behavioral-health benefit: eligibility page 1, limited services pages 3–4

IHP claims and program identity