DHS officials say redetermination numbers meeting estimates, work requirement waiver in ‘negotiation’ phase with feds

by Roby Brock (roby@talkbusiness.net)

Nearly halfway through a six-month process to redetermine Medicaid eligibility for hundreds of thousands of Arkansans, Department of Human Services officials said they believe estimates of where the population would land are close to projections.

DHS Secretary Kristi Putnam and Arkansas Medicaid Director Janet Mann appeared on this week’s edition of Capitol View and Talk Business & Politics. According to figures released by the agency in June, nearly 140,000 Arkansans have been disenrolled from the Medicaid expansion program, now known as ARHOME, or had their cases closed through regular program operations. New figures are expected to be released in mid-July.

“We do feel that they are tracking. We chose to do our extended category first with our regular renewals, because we had worked through the three-year pandemic on redeterminations, and if we determined that they would most likely be ineligible, we put them in the extended category. So we started with that, those categories first, to really work on right-sizing our population,” Mann said.

https://talkbusiness.net/2023/07/dhs-officials-say-redetermination-numbers-meeting-estimates-work-requirement-waiver-in-negotiation-phase-with-feds/

Arkansas DHS preparing for new community-based health initiatives

KUAR | By Daniel Breen

The Arkansas Department of Human Services is preparing to roll out new public health services as part of ARHOME, the state’s Medicaid expansion program.

DHS officials say they soon expect to receive approval from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for their Life360 HOME initiative to provide more services to populations most at risk of negative health outcomes.

In a webinar Thursday hosted by Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, Nell Smith, assistant director of the DHS Division of Medical Services, said the department will contract with local hospitals to provide care for three categories of Medicaid recipients.

https://www.ualrpublicradio.org/local-regional-news/2022-10-27/arkansas-dhs-preparing-for-new-community-based-health-initiatives

Arkansas Center For Health Improvement/Achi.Net

A map shows the potential location of Life360 Homes under the Arkansas Department of Human Services ARHOME Medicaid expansion program.

Sen. Ingram says Medicaid expansion staved off hospital crisis, new factors causing concern

by Roby Brock (roby@talkbusiness.net)

Sen. Keith Ingram, D-West Memphis, noted that a near decade of help from the state’s Medicaid expansion program has stabilized Arkansas’ health care system, but now a new set of circumstances is challenging hospitals’ financial health.

In an interview on Talk Business & Politics, the chair of the Senate’s Hospital and Medicaid subcommittee, said the private option, also known as Arkansas Works and ARHome, has been an effective “backstop” to guard against hospital closures, especially in rural parts of the state.

“The Medicaid expansion – Arkansas Works, ARHome – is going to be 10 years old in 2023. Without that backstop, we would’ve lost so many rural hospitals in Arkansas, like the states that surround us. They’ve had a tremendous amount of hospital enclosures. So what has happened is that staved off the financial crisis that other states have gone through until this point,” he said.

https://talkbusiness.net/2022/08/sen-ingram-says-medicaid-expansion-staved-off-hospital-crisis-new-factors-causing-concern/