Tobacco deal money to help 500 disabled Arkansans with home-based care

A law passed this year is providing 201 people with developmental disabilities with home-based services, such as help with daily living tasks, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Tuesday.

An additional 299 people are expected to receive the services but must first complete steps, such as choosing service providers, before they start getting the help.

Money for the services comes from Act 50, which allocated $8.5 million a year from the state's share of a tobacco lawsuit settlement to reduce the number of people on a waiting list for the assistance.

About 2,900 people were on the list as of Tuesday, Human Services Department spokesman Amy Webb said.

Combined with $20 million in federal Medicaid funds, the settlement money allowed the state to increase by 500 the cap on the number of Arkansans who can receive the services -- from 4,183 to 4,683.

"This means so much to the families involved because they had a limited amount of services that were provided," Hutchinson told the Arkansas Tobacco Settlement Commission on Tuesday. "This gives them more options."

Among those who have been helped is Regan Reaves, 19, of Benton, who accompanied Hutchinson at the meeting along with Regan's mother, Wendie.

Since mid-October, Wendie Reaves said, the state Medicaid program has paid for a worker who is teaching Regan to perform "self care" tasks such as making her bed and cleaning her room.

When Regan learned to wash and rinse her hair, "we celebrated with brownies," her mother said.

"We've seen small steps, and we've seen big victories in just two months," Wendie Reaves said.

Melissa Stone, director of the state Department of Human Services' Developmental Disabilities Division, said the agency received approval from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Aug. 22 to increase the number of people who receive the services under a federal waiver.

Services for the first person taken off the waiting list began in October.

Of the 500 people who had been on the waiting list the longest, 152 didn't respond to a series of letters and a phone call seeking information needed to verify their eligibility and develop service plans, Stone said.

Of the 348 who did respond, some were determined to be ineligible. Others have been approved but are still waiting for the services to start. For instance, Stone said, once a participant chooses a company to provide the services, that company must hire and train a worker.

"There's not a pool of staff sitting and waiting," she said.

Act 775, also passed during this year's legislative session, calls on the state to allocate additional money toward reducing the number of people on the waiting list starting in 2019.

That money will come through a plan to use federal and state Medicaid funds to hire provider-owned managed-care companies to provide health coverage to the about 30,000 mentally ill and developmentally disabled Medicaid recipients.

The state will recoup some of the money it pays to the companies through the state's 2.5 percent tax on insurance premiums. Act 775 directs at least half of the money collected to go toward reducing the number of people on the waiting list.

A Section on 12/13/2017

Upcoming Events