A provider agency is an organization enrolled with Medicaid to deliver services and submit the bill. In this field that usually means a community agency employing direct support professionals, running group homes or in-home shifts, and answering to a fee schedule. ANCOR is the national association many of those agencies belong to. It is a provider group, not the professional association for individual DSPs.
The agency does not set the Medicaid rate. The state does, often after a rate study and a budget. The agency sets the wage, within a floor if the state imposed one, and it keeps whatever is left after wages, benefits, overtime, empty shifts, and rent. That gap is the business. A rate increase that is smaller than wage growth is a cut in the agency's math even when the fee schedule went up.
A provider is not the same thing as a financial management service in self-direction. The fiscal agent pays a worker the person hired. The provider employs the worker and supervises the service. Some organizations hold both enrollments. The roles on a given claim are still different, which is the point of keeping plan-writing separate from service delivery.
Frontline supervisors, house managers, and executive directors are all "the agency" in a family's story. Only some of them can add a shift. The supports coordinator usually cannot, because they are not supposed to work for the provider whose hours they authorize.
When a news story says providers are challenging a wage rule, it means these organizations, sometimes joined by associations from assisted living or home care if the rule used the broader direct-care label. Read which enrollment the lawsuit is about before treating every caregiver employer as the same plaintiff.