Skilled nursing Medicaid rates in Wyoming sit below the national middle. Wyoming Medicaid's published daily rate for a nursing home stay is $259.24, effective July 1, 2026, compared with a national median of $282.59 among states with a comparable figure. Wyoming is not part of the 21-state ranking.
What defines Wyoming right now is a change in how residents are classified for payment. The state is moving its nursing home reimbursement system from the older RUG model to the Patient Driven Payment Model (PDPM), backed by a newly adopted payment rule. Every rate here is compiled from official state Medicaid publications and linked to its source document.
Wyoming Medicaid nursing home rate per day: $259.24
The $259.24 per diem is Wyoming Medicaid's payment for one nursing home resident day. It covers nursing at three licensure levels, room and board, dietary, housekeeping, activities, administration and the building.
Wyoming Medicaid is administered on a fee-for-service basis by the Wyoming Department of Health. Facility rates reflect each facility's residents and costs, so the statewide figure is a reference point; each facility should confirm its own rate. The Wyoming state page lists the published rates and links each to its source document.
From RUG to PDPM
Wyoming's transition to PDPM has run in stages:
- Optional State Assessment discontinued: announced January 27, 2025, with nursing facilities moving to PDPM effective April 1, 2025.
- Medicaid Rules Chapter 7, Nursing Facility Payment and Assessment: adopted with an effective date of January 7, 2026.
- Public and Tribal Notice, Wyoming Nursing Home Reimbursement System, RUG to PDPM: issued June 26, 2026, with an effective date of July 1, 2025.
Discontinuing the Optional State Assessment, used under the RUG approach, aligned Wyoming with the federal PDPM framework that Medicare already uses for skilled nursing stays. Chapter 7 then put the payment and assessment rules into regulation.
The June 2026 notice carries an effective date a year earlier, July 1, 2025. That signals the state plan is catching up with a transition already under way. For operators, the practical consequences are:
- Assessment accuracy drives revenue. Under PDPM, how residents are coded determines the case-mix portion of the rate.
- Watch for retroactive adjustments. With the formal notice reaching back to July 2025, rates for that period may be recalculated once the amendment is approved.
- Use Medicare experience. Facilities already coding PDPM for Medicare stays can apply the same discipline to Medicaid residents.
Rate history and swing beds
Wyoming's benchmarking rate history for nursing facilities shows a 5.0% increase for SFY 2025, effective July 1, 2024, recorded in Benchmarking Appendix F. That gives a sense of how far rates have moved in a single year before the PDPM transition. Under PDPM, year-over-year changes for an individual facility will depend more on its resident mix than on a single statewide percentage, so facilities should track their own case-mix results alongside any published increase.
Wyoming also adopted Medicaid Rules Chapter 28, Payment for Swing Bed Services, effective October 15, 2025. Swing beds let rural hospitals use acute-care beds for nursing-level care, an important source of post-acute capacity in a largely rural state. Freestanding nursing facilities should be aware of the swing bed rule, since it governs payment for the same kind of care in hospital settings.
Nursing wages in Wyoming
Wyoming's May 2025 wages are below the national median at every nursing level:
| Role | Wyoming | US median |
|---|---|---|
| Registered nurse | $40.27 | $46.90 |
| Licensed practical nurse | $30.51 | $30.96 |
| Nursing assistant (CNA) | $18.83 | $20.32 |
The registered nurse gap is the widest; licensed practical nurses earn close to the national figure. A below-median per diem combined with below-median wages leaves Wyoming's rate-to-wage balance near the national norm. The practical challenge for Wyoming facilities is often scale: in small, rural facilities, fixed costs are spread over fewer resident days, so the per diem has to stretch further than in a large urban building.
Fee-for-service, no plan negotiation
Wyoming Medicaid pays nursing facilities on a fee-for-service basis. Our data does not classify any Wyoming service line under managed care rules, so the published per diem is the payment for a Medicaid resident day. The 18 arrangements we record are mostly Wyoming Medicaid coverage groups, such as ABD Long-Term Care and ABD Institution, along with care management programs like WYhealth Health Management. None of them sets nursing facility rates, so changes to Wyoming's per diem come only through the Department of Health's rules and state plan amendments. The Wyoming managed care page summarizes them.
Wyoming against the national range
Of the 44 states with a published nursing home rate, 21 are ranked on a single daily figure. New Mexico leads at $826.00, followed by Colorado ($419.22), Rhode Island ($381.06), Washington ($373.84) and Kentucky ($365.78). At the low end are Connecticut ($107.21), Michigan ($99.90) and Arkansas ($70.00).
At $259.24, Wyoming is below the median and well behind its Mountain region neighbor Colorado. For Wyoming operators, the next year will be shaped less by the headline rate than by how PDPM classification plays out facility by facility.
See the skilled nursing industry hub for every state and the methodology page for how rates are compared.
Updated 2026-10-05