A HARP is a Health and Recovery Plan: a kind of New York Medicaid managed care plan built for adults 21 and older with serious mental illness or a substance use disorder. It is not a service and not a separate benefit card. It is the plan itself, with a wider package attached.

What it adds on top of ordinary Medicaid managed care is Behavioral Health Home and Community Based Services: recovery-oriented supports meant to help someone with significant needs live in the community rather than in a facility. Employment and education support, peer support, habilitation, family support and training, and short-term crisis respite sit in this group.

In New York: the enrollment path is the part that surprises people. You do not apply for a HARP. The state runs its behavioral health high-risk criteria against its own data and sends a letter to people who qualify, either from New York State or from New York Medicaid Choice, whose number is 1-855-355-5777. A letter like that is not junk mail and is not a bill.

Everyone enrolled in a HARP must be offered care management through a state-designated Health Home, and that care manager is who decides with you which of the enhanced services actually apply. Being in a HARP and never meeting a care manager is the most common way the benefit goes unused.

Pharmacy for HARP members runs through NYRx, the statewide Medicaid pharmacy program, rather than through the plan, which for anyone on long-term psychiatric medication means one drug list statewide instead of a new one each time plans change.

Also called: Health and Recovery Plan, behavioral health managed care. Full guide: Therapy on Medicaid in New York and how HARP works.

More in Glossary of health coverage and billing terms

  • Fair hearing — The state's review of a decision about your Medicaid, with two different deadlines that people routinely confuse.
  • Managed Long Term Care (MLTC) — The plan that authorizes and pays for long-term home care in New York. It is the payer, not the care itself.
  • Dual eligible — Having Medicare and Medicaid at the same time, which covers premiums, cost sharing and the long-term care Medicare does not.
  • Managed Long Term Care (MLTC) — The plan that authorizes and pays for long-term home care in New York. It is the payer, not the care itself.
  • Parity (mental health parity) — The rule that a health plan may not make mental health and substance use care harder or costlier to get than comparable medical care.

This page explains how the system works. It is not medical advice. More.