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ALC-Review

June 17, 2025 ·1:30 PM ·Room A, MAC ·1:54:21
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Thank you.
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 0:30
Members, it's time to start the meeting. If you'll take your seat, please. Everyone, we're going to call the meeting together. members thank you if you'll take your seats um thank you every vice chair co-chair she's he's good and with that we're going to jump right in um we're going to have a supplemental general agenda and i'll need a motion for us to suspend the rules have a motion second all in favor say aye opposed say nay thank you uh we'll take that up at the
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Speaker 4 1:22
proper time um and with that we're going to go right into um
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Speaker 5 1:29
a thank you madam chair good afternoon members katie walden bureau of legislative research fiscal division i'll be walking you through the review agenda today the first item for your review this month is item a1 this is an item that was sent to us by the legislative council for a property purchase you'll see under category a1 there is a letter from miss ann laidlaw who is the division of building authority director they're notifying us that they wish to purchase a leased space outright from the property owner that they're holding this space from it is a suite that houses a dis data center on the first floor and then some multi-use training facilities on the second floor they have requested to purchase this property um to just so they have constructional control over it the estimated value of the property is four hundred thousand dollars they have a contract to purchase the building for three hundred thirty eight thousand dollars they state they're going to use cash to purchase this um out of their real estate fund so this is the property purchase that is for
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Speaker 7 2:35
your review today members who have any questions seeing none without objection
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 2:42
this motion of this item is going to be reviewed with that we're going to move down to item B please thank you madam
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Speaker 5 2:52
chair item B in your packet is the methods of finance that are submitted for review this month you'll see under item B a letter from the office of state accounting listing all the projects that are submitted for review this month and and then on the next page page two you'll see a summary of each of those i will go over them quickly for you the first two mofs are from asu these are both new methods of finance requests for a pavilion facility to bring it into ada compliance as well as to remodel the facility number three is with asu mountain home this is to replace some roofing for where some storm damage happened on the march 20th storm number four also with asu mountain home this is a new mof for 275 000 to upgrade hvac controls and boiler replacement number five is with northwest arkansas community college this is also a new MOF worth $8.3 million initially. This is for the core engineers tornado damage repair project. Number six is with Pulaski Technical College. This is a $5 million new method of finance for various deferred maintenance repairs. Going to page three of item B, number seven is with UAMS, actually the next several are with UAMS, but number seven is using $430,000 in revenues to convert an old fitness center into a student lounge number eight with UAMS is to convert an old space into a cryo electron microscopy lab using $764,000 number nine UAMS is for a CAT scan system installation number 10 is for carpet replacement also a new MOF number 11 is for an mri building to remodel and to install a new mri system number 12 with uams is for to redesign ward tower operating room number 14 this is an amendment to an existing mof it's increasing it by four million dollars using capital lease payments and revenues number 13 is with the university of central arkansas for the arkansas hall fan coil replacement two million dollars using capital reserves on to the next page number 14 this is also with uca they are revising their existing mof related to the rebuild of the burdick hall which was burned down and so they're replacing that building number 15 also with uca this is to add a library a chiller in the toryson library and number 16 is with uca 9.5 million dollars using capital reserves for various campus improvements. These are the methods of finance for your review today. Thank you. Members don't
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 5:49
have any questions on anything on item
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Chair Unverified 5:54
B? Representative Gene, you're recognized. Thank you,
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Speaker 18 5:57
Madam Chair, and staff maybe even answered
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Representative Lane Jean Unverified 6:01
this. I just hadn't ever seen this before. On item six on Pulaski Technical, it says plant funds. Is that physical plant funds, or I've never have seen that terminology before I would defer is there anybody from Pulaski
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 6:17
here if you can come down to the table and if you will please introduce yourself for the record you'll be recognized and representing
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Speaker 26 6:39
you can ask your question. Thank you, ma'am. Rita Fleming, Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration,
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Representative Lane Jean Unverified 6:46
Pulaski Technical College. I'm over here. The funding was called plant funds. Is that physical plant funds?
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Speaker 26 6:53
It's actually, yes, plant reserve funds that are transferred each year from if we have leftover funds after covering all of our expenses we transfer those funds into the plant reserves and it's to cover things like the roof repairs the hvac systems and things of that nature okay that's my question thank you thank
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Representative Lane Jean Unverified 7:11
you for coming down appreciate it any other
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 7:15
members have any other questions seeing none without objection these items have been reviewed and with that we're going to go to item C please members there are three agencies
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Speaker 5 7:30
with discretionary grant requests for your review this month the first one is with the Department of Health they have 26 grants for your review today they're under item C page one the first six grants in this packet are all valued at around $45,000. They are grants from the Department of Health, Office of Preparedness and Emergency Response Systems to various entities around the state, and all of these are related to stroke-related services grants for ambulance service providers statewide. That takes us over to page three. Grant number seven is a $1.3 million grant to the Arkansas Cancer Coalition, and this is to maintain, promote, and expand the Arkansas Cancer Coalition to increase educational and screening opportunities for cancer and to provide funding and support to partner organizations statewide. Grants numbers 8 through 26, that's the remainder of these grants, These are all grants to various entities statewide that are valued at about $74,000. They're all federal grants, and these are all related to hepatitis C education, testing, and care for individuals living with HIV and other autoimmune diseases. So those are the grants for the Department of Health. And that takes us to item C2. These are the DHS grants for your review, and I would like to make a note for the committee. DHS called me this week and requested to remove grant number one from your consideration for this month, so we will skip over that item number one under C2. Item two under C2 is a DHS grant, federal grant, to the Community Empowerment Council, And this is for the Partnership for Success program that helps with substance misuse and related problems for certain counties in the state. And then grants number three through number 12 are all grants with DHS, Division of Aging Adults and Behavioral Health, to area agencies on aging. And these are all grants that are aimed at improving the lives of older Arkansans statewide. Each provider provides services to a certain county population. That takes us to item C, page 15. Grant number 13 is with Restore Hope Incorporated. This is a federal grant for family crisis stabilization services. Number 14, with DHS Division of County Operations to the Arkansas Alliance of Boys and Girls Clubs. This is a $2.5 million federal grant, and this is to fund the Alliance for Boys and Girls Clubs statewide. Number 15, Children Advocacy Centers of Arkansas is a $9.4 million federal grant, and this is to expand the children's advocacy program statewide. Number 16, a grant with Arkansas Baptist Children's Home and Family. This is a federal grant for at-risk families with residential homes, counseling, and family reunification services. Number 17, with Arkansas Human Development Corp., this is a $2.7 million federal grant, and this is to engage qualifying young people in STEM education programs. Number 18 is a grant to Our House. It is $3.4 million in federal funding for family crisis stabilization services. number 19 on the next page is to arkansas community action agencies association this is a $50,000 federal grant for the arkansas community action network and the last grant for your review is a dys grant $30,000 of federal funding related to targeting juveniles who are at risk to participate in gang related incidents these are the dhs grants and finally i will mention to the committee item C3 that begins on page 18 and goes through page 21. These are all grants submitted by the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff and they are for the administration of the tobacco prevention and cessation program. So all of these grants are about 75, $74,000 and they go to various entities statewide and those entities provide tobacco prevention and cessation programs in the local communities specifically targeted at at-risk populations thank you madam chair these are the discretionary grants thank
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Speaker 7 12:29
you members do we have any questions on c1 two or three
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 12:37
seeing none without objection these items are going to be reviewed and with that we're going
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Speaker 5 12:45
to go down to item d thank you madam chair item d are all the contracts submitted for the committee's review today at the beginning of d1 you'll see a letter from the osp director miss jessica patterson she calls out that there are two ratifications for the committee's review today and she also lists the contracts as requested by this committee that previously were procured under the traditional or the most advantageous proposal method of procurement so that's the list you see there but she also states that all the contracts presented for the committee's review today were found to be legal and and sound the first specific contracts for your review today are the ratifications there are two for this month and so i'll go over those with you now the first ratification that we received is a request from the insurance department and you'll see there's a letter here and also later in the packet you'll see there's a new contract with the individual that's mentioned but this specific letter
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Speaker 36 13:51
is speaking on the ratification the insurance department has contracted with an expert witness who is involved in a case that the
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Speaker 5 14:00
insurance department's currently active in and under a previous staff member this attorney was allowed to begin work before the full procurement process was complete. And so they have one outstanding invoice for this individual that they have not paid. And so they are requesting today for that invoice to be ratified. So you'll see there's the letter from the insurance department explaining the situation. The second ratification for your review today is from the Northwest Arkansas Community College. on July 30th of 2024 the Northwest Arkansas Community College internet entire system everything was compromised and hacked and so because of this emergent situation NWAC contracted with a company to bring back their internal internet security and so the ratification today is for you all to review that they went ahead and made the payments to that company that was related with restoring their internet and their system security they have also requested a new contract with this company moving forward as well to retain that security so those are
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Speaker 7 15:13
the two ratifications for your review this month members are there
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 15:18
any questions seeing none without objection we're going to mark these items as reviewed
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Speaker 7 15:24
and with that we're going to go down to d2 thank you madam chair
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Speaker 36 15:31
d2 or the construction contracts for your review today there are 14 number one is with asubb this is a new contract with witzel evans rasco for on-call architectural services items number two and three are both
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Speaker 5 15:48
with black river technical college these are both with architectural firms for on-call architectural services number four is with division of environmental quality with acom technical services this is for emergency containment and hazard mitigation for underground storage tanks number five is also with deq with spatco energy solutions this is for assessment and services related to underground storage
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Speaker 36 16:17
tanks number six is with dfa revenue services with lockaby and associates for on-call professional engineering design services number seven is with parks Heritage and Tourism with Crafton and Toll. This is for wayfinding and pre-design services at the Maumelle Pinnacle Trail. Number eight
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Speaker 5 16:36
is with Arkansas State Police and Witzel Evans-Rasco for on-call architectural design. Number nine, University of Arkansas with Bernard for on-call mechanical, electrical, and plumbing services for facilities management. Number
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Speaker 36 16:50
10 is with University of Arkansas with SCM Architects for on-call architect services.
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Speaker 5 16:57
number 11 u of a with wittenberg deloney and davidson this is for the silica silicon carbide fabrication laboratory project items
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Speaker 36 17:04
number 12 and 13 are both with ua fort smith they are both for on-call engineering services with craft and until and half associates number 14 is with ua fort smith for hp engineering for on-call engineering services these are the construction contracts any questions
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 17:25
members seeing none without objection you can mark these items reviewed and with that we're going to go
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Speaker 36 17:36
down to d3 d3 are the intergovernmental contracts for your review today number one is with asu and uams this is their ebrx program it is for the prescription drug program for asu number two is department of commerce arkansas rehab services with guy fentner education services co-op this is for human resources functions for ARS number three the department of education with the state of Kansas this is a new contract that allows for the University of Kansas to administer dynamic learning maps for schools number four department of health with UAMS for the department of health stroke STEMI section this is for the Paul Coverdell National Acute Stroke Program. Number five, Department of Health with UAMS for comprehensive and risk-appropriate maternity care for at-risk women in the state. Number six, Department of Health with UAMS for health policy research, program development, and public issue advocacy statewide. Number seven, Department of Health with UAMS for a physician consultant to the trauma section. Number
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Speaker 5 18:48
eight is DHS with UA Little Rock. This is to provide the Mid-South Summer School Conference. Number nine, DHS with UAMS for emergency medical
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Speaker 36 18:57
or surgical services for patients of the Arkansas State Hospital as needed. DHS with UAMS is number 10 for clinical education services for the Arkansas State Hospital. Number
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Speaker 5 19:10
11 is DHS with UA Fayetteville for performance indicators to continue management of the
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Speaker 36 19:15
arkansas partnership for public child welfare number 12 is dhs with ua little rock for parenting education programs number 13 dhs with uams for the evaluation of family first services and prevention act services number
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Speaker 5 19:31
14 is dhs with uams for a physicians to have a collaborative program development and integrated advocacy of public policy issues these are the intergovernmental contracts for your
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 19:45
review today thank you members um i have a question for the department of education if they could come to the table please Courtney Solis for Department of Education Greg Rogers Department of Education Thank y'all for coming down My question is on three Which is with the state of Kansas Can you tell me what this
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Speaker 52 20:33
is Doing this dynamic learning maps So this is a consortium That we have
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 20:37
chosen to be a part of And they have created an alternate assessment for students with significantly cognitive disabilities those who are unable to take our state assessment through the atlas system they take the dynamic learning maps which is that alternate assessment and how does that work i can't give you specifics um and i but i can get that information for you but a lot of the times it is um different ways of working with those students who maybe they are not physically able to take an assessment and so they might do it verbally or they might take pictures and create kind of a portfolio of things that they are doing with that student to show the progress of that student but it is going to look a little bit different based on that student's disabilities but I can also get more
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 21:28
information for you on that. Do we know about
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 21:32
how many students will fit within this? So we are limited by the federal government to only identify about one percent of our special ed student population. Again I don't have that exact number but if we were to go over that one percent then we have to supply justification to the U.S. Department of Education. We also make school districts go through a very thorough explanation and checklist when they identify these specific students. So we try to keep it to again those most severe
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 21:58
students. So this is basically for 1% of our special education students that we're going to try to provide them a different way to take the assessments. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you. Representative McElindon, is this for the Department of Education? Okay. Thank y'all. Thank you. Representative McElindon, who do you
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Representative Mindy McAlindon Unverified 22:20
need? UMS. UAMS. UAMS. Can someone come down, please?
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 22:29
and if you can please introduce yourself for the record and you'll be recognized
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Representative Mindy McAlindon Unverified 22:53
representing McElindon Andy Davis with UAMS thank you thank you chairman I had a question on number 14 if you could just explain the program it says it's regarding collaborative program development and integrated advocacy of public policy issues? Do you know what that
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Speaker 69 23:05
is? No, I'll be honest with you. I'm not familiar with that. Okay. If you want to give me some questions, I'll get it back
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Representative Mindy McAlindon Unverified 23:12
to you, find out what it is. Okay. I was just looking for
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Speaker 69 23:17
more information on what was, did you? Okay. You haven't. Sorry. I was outside. I'm
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Speaker 70 23:22
not even sure where we're at. Sorry. You're an ALC. We got through the
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Speaker 64 23:26
MOS. And if you can introduce yourself for
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Speaker 72 23:29
the record, please. Sure. I'm Nell Smith. I'm Deputy Director for the Division of Medical Services at DHS. This contract is for two physicians that we use for clinical support, Dr. Golden and Dr. Chris Smith. Okay. And so what do they do? They're providing clinical expertise for our Medicaid decisions. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. I can't believe y'all all just got out of the queue.
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 23:57
I was just going to let you all ask Mr. Davis a lot of questions. Would it be rude if I took a picture of that? Thank y'all for coming down. Any other questions? Wait just a moment. Andy, since this is. Senator Johnson
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Chair Unverified 24:14
has a question. Since this is policy and public policy, I thought they were advising with you on how to develop those. I'm
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Speaker 80 24:20
on a need-to-know basis, Senator. thank you seeing no other
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 24:33
questions without objection these contracts are going to be reviewed and we're going to move on down to number three no sorry four thank you
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Speaker 5 24:42
thank you madam chair d4 are the out-of-state contracts they begin on item d page 21 of your d packet there are 54 out of 55 out-of-state contracts for your review today number one is with asubb and
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Speaker 36 25:00
abm industries for custodial services at heber springs and the latimer campuses number two is with arkansas tech a contract with learning solutions this is a new contract for an online training portal curriculum and learning platform number three is with the natural Resources Commission with Raymond James and Associates. This is for the
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Speaker 5 25:22
General Obligation Bond Program and Advising Services for the AR Water Waste Disposal and Pollution Abatement Facility for the GO Bond Program.
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Speaker 36 25:32
Number four is with Arkansas Rehab Services with SHI International Corporation. This is for case management systems. Number five is with DWS with the Innovative Policy lab this is for ongoing administration and integration
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Speaker 5 25:46
of the ui certification hub number six is with the department of commerce state insurance department with robert b handyfeld this is the previous contract that i mentioned in the ratification for the expert witness program or programming and services provided by this gentleman number seven is with the department of corrections with well path this is amendment one to an existing contract that they previously had approved last year this amendment one is just changing the scope of work for this contract and there's no amount associated with it it's now extended through september 30th of
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Speaker 36 26:21
2026 contract number eight under out of state is with the department of education with american institutes for research this is a new contract for educational benefit reviews and it's for the implementation
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Speaker 5 26:35
of professional development and technical assistance programs you'll note that this is a sole source by justification contract and this is the first one that you will see documentation for in your salmon packet. We included the letter from Jessica Patterson as well as the information provided by the Department of Ed explaining the need for the sole source by justification for this procurement. Number nine is Department of Education with Computer Aid Incorporated. This is an amendment to an existing contract and it is for the aels project number 10
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Speaker 36 27:12
is with the department of education with mindset labs incorporated this is for mental health referral services that the department will provide to school districts it's going to be a resource for students and parents for mental health services number 11 is with the department of education with the national center for the for improvement it is for educational assessments number 12 is with dfa dispersing officer with alvarez and marcel holdings this is for a study on the financial viability of rural hospitals number 13 is with dfa management services with opex corporation for scanners software and maintenance services that takes us to number 14 on page d26 department of health with american board of family medicine this is amendment one to an existing contract for tracking and monitoring of standardized clinical demographic measures for patients with chronic diseases as well as social needs assessments based on determinants of health number 15 department of health with
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Speaker 5 28:20
stat courier these are courier services for transporting adh lab samples to and from the public health lab number 16 department of health with tech systems
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Speaker 36 28:32
this is to provide i.t services and administrative management of technical resources for department of health i.t division number 17 department of health with verado incorporated this is for data management and reporting associated with the arkansas state health Alliance for Records Exchange, also known as SHARE. Number 18 is on page D28 with DHS with Myers and Stouffer. This is support for supplemental payments including cost report audits and related settlements related to intermediate care facilities and health centers. Number 19 is DHS Division of Aging Adults and Behavioral Health with Crothal Health Care. This is for environmental and janitorial services at the state hospital number 20 also dhs with health care services group incorporated this is for food services at the state hospital number
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Speaker 5 29:29
21 with linen king this is for laundry services at the state hospital amendment number five to an existing contract now beginning on page 30 with contract number 22 and going all the way to page 34 these are
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Speaker 36 29:46
all with the department of human services division of children and family services and i'll just note that contracts number 22 and 23 are with a provider called evident change and they are for a decision making assessment system as well as a review of performance indicators and quality improvement reviews number 24 and as i mentioned going all the way to number 29 these are dhs division of children and family services all contracts with qualified residential treatment programs and comprehensive residential treatment services providers across the state number 29 with division
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Speaker 5 30:33
of county operations with 22nd century technologies this is for clerical positions with a division of
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Speaker 36 30:39
county operations number 30 is with a gps contract
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Speaker 5 30:44
provider and this is to allow them to be in compliance with their minimum essential coverage as required by irs number 31 dhs with dds with verida this is for day treatment transportation early intervention day treatment and adult development day treatment facilities number 32 with DMS is with Gainwell Technologies. This is for maintenance and operation of the Arkansas Medicaid Enterprise and Medicaid Management Information Corps system. Contracts number 33 and number 34 are both
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Speaker 36 31:21
with Optum Government Solutions and they are providing decision support system management administrative reporting systems and service assessment centers and support programs statewide for DHS Division of Medical Services. Number 35 is with
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Speaker 5 31:38
DMS and QSource. This is an amendment to an existing contract for ongoing analysis and evaluation of information.
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Speaker 36 31:50
Number 36 is with DHS, DYS with Handle Information Technologies, and this is for the creation and provision of a network to manage their service providers through the state for DYS, and this is another one of your sole source contracts it's listed on page four of your salmon packet number 37 also with dys and rite of passage this is for an agreement for the residential facilities contracts for juvenile statewide number 38 is with the department of public safety arkansas crime information center with computer projects of illinois and this is
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Speaker 5 32:28
to perform updates with the acic criminal history message switch this is on page eight of your
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Speaker 36 32:35
salmon packet as a sole source procurement project number 39 department of transformation and shared services building authority division with universal protection service this is for security guard services in the old army navy hospital and hot springs 40 is DTSS with DIS with Crow and Chiswick LLP this is for accounting services with DIS number 41 is with DTSS statewide shared services with Deloitte Consulting this is with OPM and they are
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Speaker 5 33:08
wanting to establish and upgrade the onboarding process for state employees and so that DTSS is engaging with Deloitte to help with that process. Number 42 is in Northwest Arkansas Community College with ACPIT. This is the other, the second ratification that I mentioned earlier. This is the new contract for the internet security provider, and it's also listed in your salmon packet with the appropriate paperwork on page 12. Number 43 is with Northwest Arkansas Community College
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Speaker 36 33:42
with Macklemore Building Maintenance. This is for custodial services on the NWAC main campus. Number 44, also with NWAC with the SHI International Corporation. This is for their human capital management software. Number 45, disability determination with Social Security Administration with
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Speaker 5 34:01
one individual, a Ms. Celeste Derrico for medical consultant examinations. On page 42 you're going to see a number of contracts with the University of Arkansas with some consulting groups. There are seven contracts total in this section and they're with different providers. These are all on-call vendors that they have that will help them as needed with research administration services as well as advancement for any of their colleges schools faculty and administration so they will they have this list of vendors that they will use as needed for some implementing their research projects or their advancement projects so that is contract number 46 to number 51 that takes us to item D page 43 Pulaski Technical College with Silver Tech this is website hosting
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Speaker 36 35:00
for Pulaski Tech number 53 is with UA Fort Smith with Veracity on-site. This is for operations of a student health clinic. Number 54 with UA Little Rock with Strata Collaborative. This is for student navigation services for transfer students at UA Little Rock. These oh and
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Speaker 5 35:17
there's one more out-of-state contract the supplemental agenda item you'll see that in your supplemental agenda packet. The first thing in that packet is just a letter telling you the reason why this item had to be a supplemental agenda item the state police wanted to contract with motorola solutions to outfit their state police fleet with cloud-based camera systems and they had submitted everything on time just that contract didn't make it on the list of things to be sent over on time and it wasn't discovered until our packet was posted to the web however they did contact me osp did contact me at the end of last week and notified me that this contract had had everything check they just forgot to send it over so on the final page of this packet you'll see the summary of the contract as i stated this is a 4.2 million dollar contract for the camera cars the car camera systems for the state police so these are all the out-of-state contracts thank you representative vaughn who
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 36:17
do you need to speak with department of education department of education can you come them down to the table please and if you will please introduce yourself for the record and you'll be recognized and representative on you can ask your
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Representative DeAnn Vaught Unverified 36:38
question Courtney solace for a Department of Education drag Rogers department education thank you madam chair i'm looking at item 10. it's a mindset lab inc can you tell me what this lab is going to be doing it's a hundred percent state dollars and
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Speaker 98 37:06
it's a total of seven million dollars um so one of um governor sanders initiatives was for us to address mental health and behavioral health with students and so we did an rfp and this was the prevailing vendor that is going to be a connection kind of a mediator between parents and mental health services so if a school district talks to a
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 37:27
parent and feels like that student might need some additional services outside of school then they can connect the parent with this this vendor who will connect them with available counselors available virtual mental health therapy in the area so again kind of acting like a mediator or a connection between the two
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Representative DeAnn Vaught Unverified 37:45
okay thank you madam chair I'll get back in the queue I've got to
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 37:58
get my thoughts well that made me have a question so how does this fit into the whole mental health process that we're working in through DHS where we have one centralized part place for someone to call if they need mental health is this going to be tied into that at all or is it just going to be another standalone that's not communicating
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Speaker 98 38:18
with somebody else so we do are having continuing discussions with DHS about how the two processes will will
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 38:24
intertwine this one in particular is going to be connected directly to school districts and so you know it will only apply to those kids who are in public schools and are not Medicaid eligible or that would be billed separately and And so we're still working through how the two will connect, but just making
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Speaker 104 38:42
sure that all students have that ability to access mental health and behavioral health services. Yeah, I think
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 38:50
that's really important. But I also think that we need to have just one simple way for somebody that's in crisis to be able to contact somebody and be able to get whether they're a student, whether on Medicaid, doesn't really matter if they're just an individual. But we need to not put any roadblocks up. And so if we could find a way for the two to work together, that would be awesome because the students do need this help. But, I mean, if we could find that way, that would be actually pretty awesome for the kids and for the people that really need the help. So I would really highly recommend that we find those ways for that to work together. Yes. And with that, I think Representative Vaught has a
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Representative DeAnn Vaught Unverified 39:31
question. Thank you, Madam Chair. I can follow up now. So how many, if I'm reading this right, it is $7 million for one year?
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Speaker 98 39:39
So that would be the maximum amount. It's a tiered funding system based on the number of students
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 39:45
that are referred through it. And so I think it lays it out in here. But based on how many referrals they receive. So if it's up to 5,000 referrals is 70,000. If it goes up to 10,000 referrals, 166,000. and so that would be based on the number of referrals for a total of up to seven years for seven million dollars and again
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Representative DeAnn Vaught Unverified 40:09
I'm big into mental health I've we work a task group take a task force group type situation I know it's needed I guess my question is all we're doing is referring them to we're paying a company to refer them to somebody is that all we're doing is that
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 40:29
all this does that is all this contract does we do have another rfp that is currently in process to identify um service providers for the actual services this one was completed first and so we went ahead and brought it to you so that they can help us identify existing providers but we will also be bringing another contract to you for the actual services okay and how much is it cost
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Speaker 104 40:51
in the state for the referral for the referral again it's a well for the referral is a tiered process and so it just depends on how many referrals are made all right thank you madam chair senator history you're recognized or
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 41:08
you don't real quick is there anybody else for the Department of Education all right you're oh representative I mean
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 41:16
Senator Bryant you're recognized thank you Matt I'm just gonna follow on a a contract that's an out-of-state contract to navigate our services back to a state provider of a future contract, why can't DHS, through one of their many programs, intercept that and work on that subsequent contract coming our way versus paying an out-of-state company to do that for us? I don't want to speak on behalf of DHS. we're just trying to make sure that there are no roadblocks to Representative Kavanaugh's point and that if a parent is having trouble knowing where to go that they have someone
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Speaker 104 41:58
to call that can help them find that and this was the the vendor that won the
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 42:04
RFP. Was DHS eligible to bid on that project i
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Speaker 120 42:08
don't believe that would work that way
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 42:11
is dhs available for this conversation somebody could someone come up from dhs
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Speaker 125 42:35
uh janet man deputy secretary and state medicaid director dhs and
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Speaker 126 42:49
sarah cunningham chief procurement officer dhs thank you madam
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 42:53
chair and i'll restate the question so we we department of education is looking at a program where our children in crisis parents have an option to go to the school and say we need additional resources the school will give them a and correct me if this process isn't how I envision it they'll give them access to a resource to call an 800 number to talk to a group that has a list of mental health resources back within our state to tie them on how they'll get additional funding or pay for that program to get that child the services they need do we not have that existing function within the Department of Health Human Services for mental health with access to those resources that we can also give those parents and if not is that capability available within the dhs
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Speaker 125 43:41
and so i'll begin and others will chime in and we
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Senator Breanne Davis Unverified 43:48
have been working with the department of education on this process with children in schools and also crisis in children outside of schools our primary focus has been medicaid eligible children there are others that will still need that service so i think in combination with education and dhs all children can be served so those that not
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 44:12
only are medicaid eligible but those physicians typically that take medicaid will take private insurance as well so are we are we reinventing the wheel with this process versus just not using in-house services that we have the ability to connect
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Senator Breanne Davis Unverified 44:27
with i don't know that i i can answer that i was not we didn't participate in the rfp i'll defer
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 44:39
to ade sorry so can you recite the question it seems like we have a functioning wheel through the medicaid program this is typically going to be used for potentially private insurance through maybe a larger pool of students they already have a list of service providers for the medicaid program i assume those same providers will access private insurance the same as they would medicaid probably at a higher rate and be welcome to have it are we reinventing the wheel with these type of contracts versus just not using in-house existing programs i think again this
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Speaker 98 45:11
is partially to address those students who are either have private insurance um and in some
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 45:18
cases the doctor who accepts medicaid will accept but not in all cases and also parents may not know how to navigate that with their own insurance company and so that's a service that this this company can provide or if they don't give consent for the billing of the insurance that we are just trying to make sure that the parents don't have those roadblocks and so that if they don't know where to go they don't know what to do and they're not medicaid eligible or even if they are they might end up getting referred back to the medicaid system but that they have someone that the school district can say this is who you call they will help you build insurance if that's what you need to do they'll help you navigate they'll help you find someone just to help them navigate through the process okay and then on the subsequent contract that's going to identify list providers will those be just arkansas-based providers regionally based providers national providers um it could be either because many of them offer telehealth services and so in in several of our rural and remote areas where there's not a a physician or a clinician or someone that the student can go to it might be better for
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Speaker 104 46:25
them to access a telehealth service from another state that we don't know exactly until that process is complete okay and it's
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 46:31
not a good idea to hold this contract until those other areas are defined or do you need this release prior to understanding what the program looks like in whole i mean we would like to
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Speaker 98 46:42
go ahead and have this so that we can start setting up this system and working with school districts and
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 46:47
the company to to vet out that process so that as soon as we have the other um identified this is ready to go so the the option i'll i'll one more it's just a little attitude on this so the option of having our school systems not call DHS maybe give this funding to DHS and the same group that's working the Medicaid program and trying to get these mental health services through the Medicaid population they cannot expand that program and use Arkansas based counselors and use the money to navigate those programs and insurance since we've already got the staff that's kind of familiar with these programs that's not that's not the better trade-off for this money i think that would be a dhs question whether they could create something new that would not
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Senator Breanne Davis Unverified 47:44
work with medicaid specific students our our primary program is medicaid eligible i think um we had not contemplated a a separate service so i'm not quite sure how to answer that's an
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 47:57
acceptable answer all right thank you so i just have a follow-up also so dhs primary concern is going to be those students who are medicaid eligible correct and that's what we're building our program out
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Senator Breanne Davis Unverified 48:15
through dhs for actually we are building a hub and spoke with the crisis pilot to serve all of arkansans and then that will blend into a permanent program and medicaid will
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 48:28
be primarily the driver okay but the hub that we're building now is if i was in crisis i could call i'm not medicaid but i could call it would refer me to a provider correct is that is that how the scope of it's going to work that if i'm in crisis it's going to put me to
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Senator Breanne Davis Unverified 48:48
where i need to go It is under development, so that
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 48:51
is a goal. Yes. I guess I'm going to ask the Department of Education this question. So before we went this route, why didn't we ask DHS when we're pulling out and we're developing this hub approach already, why did we not ask that this be part of the hub that they're already developing, although their primary care is going to be Medicaid, they're building it out so anyone can call. so why are we trying to redevelop a will just for the education system and not make it part for the hope of what's going to be available for the whole state so we
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Speaker 52 49:27
did have those discussions and i think to um what janet said they they're in development
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 49:32
and at some time if that gets it put into place and we can then terminate this contract um that would be great but we know that takes time and we wanted to get services available to students as soon as possible and so by using an already established system we can do that until to fill that time until the state's system is ready to go and what does it
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 49:55
take to terminate this contract with this provider i believe
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Speaker 148 49:58
it's 30 days notice 60 days notice 60 days
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 50:01
that's it okay um i have several in just in the queue so representative bentley you're recognized thank you just
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Representative Mary Bentley Unverified 50:08
real quickly so i want to know how much per call so what does it cost for one individual to call what
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 50:16
do we what is the charge so it's a tiered funding system um it is a minimum annual cost of ten thousand dollars and then up to five thousand referrals is um sixty thousand so at a total annual cost of seventy thousand dollars up to 5 000 referrals and then it increases for each tier and what's the next tier the next tier is up to 10 000 referrals is 166 000 25 000 referrals is 310 000 50 000 referrals is 670 000 75 000 referrals is 994 000 100 000 referrals is 1.2 million and 200 000 referrals which would be more than half of the student population would be 1.8 million. Okay, thank you.
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 51:10
Representative Vaughn, you're recognized. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm
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Representative DeAnn Vaught Unverified 51:17
going to maybe piggyback off of some of what Senator Josh Bryant was saying. So I don't know of many schools in the state of Arkansas that doesn't have two or more mental health providers on campus now in the state of Arkansas. And so I'm thinking, you know, I know in our meetings that Representative Kavanaugh had with providers across the state, they asked for an increase to help cover some of their costs. We're willing to pay $7,000, just $7 million to somebody who's out of state instead of give our local people in the state of Arkansas a better rate to be able to provide all the services that they need to provide for the state of Arkansas. And I understand there is a great crisis going on with children in the state of Arkansas. I don't like knowing what this company stands for. I don't like knowing who they're going to refer our kids to. I mean, there's things in this that's kind of unknown that really kind of bothers me a whole lot. You know, we're not going to have much control about who they actually refer them to. What if it's a parent, the parent didn't really want them to go to that person, but we've already referred them to them. They're doing telehealth with them now with this therapist who's teaching them things that maybe the parent didn't really want to talk about, didn't want the therapist to talk about with them um i i have great concern ma'am madam chair about this particular contract and i would ask that we would pull it out for a separate vote
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 53:03
whenever we vote thank you ma'am duly noted um does anybody else have a question for the department of education on this representative painter you're recognized thank you madam
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Speaker 155 53:17
chair did y'all ever reach out to
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 53:20
DHS yes we've had several conversations and continue to have
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Representative Stetson Painter Unverified 53:23
ongoing conversations and then second on DHS how far are you out from your portal being
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Senator Breanne Davis Unverified 53:33
done they the work began in April and I can get you an exact date I'm just turning to see if somebody was here I
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Speaker 158 53:39
mean are we a month out two months out do I mean just a
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Representative Stetson Painter Unverified 53:47
generic I think we are a year a year out yes sir if okay and one more question how long would it take for if you did if this contract how far would it take for them to get all this
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 53:57
referral process all out and ready to go for students I mean our understanding is that this this is an existing company that operates in other states and so it's already set and ready to go really the only time frame for implementation which we is why we want this contract now is so before school starts we have time to meet with schools and counselors set up the process many of our school districts do have mental health providers but they are so overrun they can't see all the students they can't work with all the students they the school districts have come to us and ask for help and said we need assistance we don't have enough providers we don't have the staff and parents counselors are spending all their time trying to help parents find these different resources and so again and this was our way of trying to help them find the resources as soon as possible while we are waiting on this process that DHS is doing to be complete. And I'm going to use this opportunity to also address Representative Vaught. No parent would be forced to use any particular provider. If they were referred by the school district to this company, which is part of the process we're setting up before school starts, they could make them available a 5 or 10 or 15 providers. and then that parent could choose who they go to, and if they don't like that provider, then they can go to someone else. This is not about forcing any child or parent to go to a particular provider at all. It's more, we call it a concierge service. If you were to go to this company and say, I want this type of therapy for my student, help me find it, they will help you find what you're
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 55:31
looking for. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a question. who did you speak to at DHS about this particular contract and how it might work with their system
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 55:42
they're developing it's been several months ago I believe we've had several different conversations with um Melissa and Paula and Janet I think we've had conversations yeah I was in one of the
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Senator Breanne Davis Unverified 55:52
original meetings and so was Deputy Secretary Mr. Eubanks along with several division directors and Director of Specialty Populations, Melissa Weatherton, Paula Stone, and I even believe the DMS Director, Elizabeth Pittman, was there. I think there were six or seven of us in one of the original meetings, and then there have been several follow-up meetings on this subject and related to this also with mental health in the schools. Okay. But
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 56:19
the other meeting also talked about other things rather than just this integration that might be able to exist,
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Senator Breanne Davis Unverified 56:26
correct? the initial meeting where we all went to ADE was on this specific subject and then it evolved into regular meetings and always focused on mental health but not primarily on this RFP okay thank you
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Speaker 7 56:40
very much any other questions for members for the department
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 56:44
of education no oh representative Springer you're recognized you got to press it again there you
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Representative Joy Springer Unverified 56:59
go good afternoon thank you madam chair are we talking to follow up on the questions i've been asked about this service are we talking about thousands of students that are going to be uh assisted with this program we're talking about is it thousands that we're talking about
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 57:17
that would be our anticipation of course we won't know until we actually get started and see how many are referred so
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Representative Joy Springer Unverified 57:24
you don't have any idea how many of those students are have you done any kind of data collection in order to determine
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 57:31
how many students we're talking about we are made aware from school districts of thousands of students that are in need of behavioral and mental health services again the the school counselor can refer parents to this entity but parents may choose not to use the entity so it's difficult to to even estimate the number that would use the service
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 57:55
all right thank you representative Beatty is your question for this representative Beatty you're recognized thank you madam chair
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Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr. Unverified 58:02
um I heard it stated a little earlier but I'd like I can restate again. Who specifically at DHS was working on this?
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Senator Breanne Davis Unverified 58:13
Yes, sir. In the initial meeting was myself, Misty Bowen-Eubanks, Melissa Weatherton, Paula Stone, and I believe Elizabeth Pittman. And from there, it has gotten to a smaller group in the Office of Substance Abuse and Mental Health, which is led by Paula Stone and Melissa Weatherton to include Tabitha McNulty. and i believe rose page and and and
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Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr. Unverified 58:39
from that group from that initial meeting to that working group what has transpired to advance this cause beyond let's have a new contract a new vendor we we
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Senator Breanne Davis Unverified 58:53
met i'll begin and then i will defer to ade we met with them initially about how we could partner and they began working on their RFP which I will let them go into details it then has followed up with working on the outcomes of a bill that was not that was not passed or was not implemented or not going to be implemented this session but then continuing on I think the most recent set of meetings happened last week and this week also and then
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Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr. Unverified 59:26
I guess a follow-up for ADE I'd like you to be very specific with what assistance your communications with DHS what they offered you in assistance in advancing this what was offered what they tell you they could do for you so
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Speaker 52 59:42
as Janet stated we had the initial meeting I mean probably six or seven months ago and they
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 59:49
did talk about the pilot programs that they are implementing to in regional areas they talked about the the hub that they are building out and that expressed that they do feel like this would address all students in the state but because of the severity and the consistent calls that we get from school districts we felt it was important enough for us to go ahead with the RFP and have an existing vendor step in and do this until such time that the hub is ready to serve all of these states I mean all of the students in the state so it was our decision to go ahead with the RFP even though DHS felt like they will be able to serve all students once the system is
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Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr. Unverified 1:00:30
established. And then one quick follow-up. You said due to the volume of calls that you received, could you give us information on how many calls you do receive from school districts? It
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 1:00:41
would be difficult to put a number on it. I will go ahead and say hundreds, but I will add that as far back as July of last year, Governor Sanders met with a room of about 30 superintendents and just heard story after story after story of student behaviors that are causing teachers to leave the profession, causing paraprofessionals to be put in the hospital. Every district you talk to can give you at least five stories of students in their district that are demonstrating these severe behaviors and actions. And so I know if we were to ask any single superintendent, they could give us more and more stories but I will say at least a minimum of a few hundred calls that we get and have gotten over the last year because as they have seen that we and DHS are working on this and looking at this and looking for resources for them the more that they know we're looking the more that they call and tell us you know that they need this okay thank you representative vaude is yours
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:01:46
for this you're recognized thank you madam chair um
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Representative DeAnn Vaught Unverified 1:01:52
can i ask dhs a question do y'all know who all the providers are in the state of arkansas do y'all have a list of all
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Senator Breanne Davis Unverified 1:02:05
the providers in the state we would only have the list of medicaid enrolled providers i wouldn't have a list of any
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Representative DeAnn Vaught Unverified 1:02:11
that are not medicaid providers is there anyone in the state that would have those which that the list could be put together so like i figure arkansas children's has their list i i don't know about uams i know that y'all had medicaid but to me it looks like what they really need is a list of providers within our own state it's not like i wouldn't think we would need really this company to tell us who provides in our state if there was a way for us to get all of those together is that my understanding of what we need is who provides in
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Speaker 52 1:02:46
the state i think that's one component of it is identifying those who provides but then also again helping
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Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified 1:02:51
them helping parents navigate the system if they have to get a physician referral if they have to build their own insurance if you know whatever the the need may be that they walk parents through this process so it's not as simple as just providing a list as it is then also having the staff available to work with school counselors and parents
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Representative DeAnn Vaught Unverified 1:03:15
to to help the parents through the process can i ask dhs another question did we pass legislation that got rid
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Senator Breanne Davis Unverified 1:03:26
of referrals to go to mental health we there was a statute passed that um relieved the pcp referral for behavioral health services
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Representative DeAnn Vaught Unverified 1:03:35
i believe i believe so too yes um so referrals would that be just medicaid or is that for medicaid and insurance because i understood it was for both i
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Senator Breanne Davis Unverified 1:03:47
think i believe it was for the medicaid program that i can speak to so that would include our fee for service our past program and any potential referral on the qualified health plans for our
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:03:59
expansion population representative vod i can correct that i ran the bill the bill did away with the pre-authorization requirement for anybody in a mental health crisis whether it was medicaid which already had the pre-authorization gone and this applied to private
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Senator Mark Johnson Unverified 1:04:14
insurance so if somebody's in a mental health crisis there no longer is a pre-authorization requirement
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Representative DeAnn Vaught Unverified 1:04:26
so madam chair i would like to make a motion that we hold this contract until friday so everybody can get their questions answered and maybe feel a little bit more comfortable about giving seven million dollars to this company in california just for a consulting fee thank you ma'am i'll take that motion at the
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:04:47
proper time thank you any other questions for the department of education on this senator gilmore you're recognized and perhaps this
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Chair Unverified 1:04:57
needs to wait at the proper time
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Senator Ben Gilmore Unverified 1:04:59
with the motion will that be to approve just but hold for friday or what is what is your intentions there representative all your record and maybe we should wait for the motion to have
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Representative DeAnn Vaught Unverified 1:05:16
discussion at that time and i'm happy to do that representative all
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Speaker 189 1:05:25
you're recognized i meant for it to be
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:05:29
held and not be voted on not be reviewed correct sir thank you all right members any other questions for the department of education before they leave seeing none thank you all for staying and thank you for answering questions dhs i need you to stay please
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Senator Mark Johnson Unverified 1:05:48
all right um with that senator hester yours is not for dhs correct all right senator johnson you're recognized
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Chair Unverified 1:05:53
okay the uh on on page 36 in that ind you have three contracts with optum uh with those three it's it's uh totals approximately spend since 2022 200 million dollars and that's that's the state's part of that is 50 million can you tell me what we're getting out of that 50 million that we've spent that i can't see something that you can't do
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Senator Breanne Davis Unverified 1:06:28
yes sir i will begin and then others will correct me what i get wrong So the contract with Optum, the larger contract, is our decision support services. They house our claims, our electronic data warehouse. We use them for our analysis and our services to be able to review our claims. And I'll let the others give you additional detail. Nell
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Speaker 72 1:06:58
Smith, Deputy Director for the Division of Medical Services. is Optum, as Janet said, is our data warehouse, so they do queries for us. When you all ask for data, they run our queries for us. They run performance, our core set performance indicators. They calculate those. Those are things like percentage of women who receive a mammogram. They do the same thing for our home population. So they are, and they do data analysis on our financials.
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Chair Unverified 1:07:36
There's nobody in the 7,500 staff that you got that can do something in that range or our DIS in the state of Arkansas? so
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Speaker 132 1:07:54
this is a contracted service from approximately six years ago and
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Senator Breanne Davis Unverified 1:07:59
it is a combination of contract staff and we do have some employed staff but it is um very technical at times and it does house the actual data warehouse is paying for that also um would you like to add anything Jeff Dean DHS
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Speaker 199 1:08:25
CIO we actually had a conversation with DIS because it's time to
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Speaker 200 1:08:28
rebid these services and there is some state core infrastructure that they think they want us to leverage but that's just some software in some of the guts when we talked to them about the actual people and the services themselves they agree that we don't have the capacity in the state to do this that that should be a contracted out service so and there were other contracts we're talking about the DSS contract but one of the contracts is strictly for independent assessments I believe but I don't think we spoke to that yet we have not independent
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Senator Breanne Davis Unverified 1:09:07
assessment is a separate contract I'm looking for the other division director to answer that question I mean the whole
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Chair Unverified 1:09:16
total is state spend is 50 million dollars at one point do you get the experts and do this yourself or
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Speaker 205 1:09:34
you just keep throwing money after money just asking well
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Speaker 72 1:09:38
I'll speak to just a recent we had an in-house data analytics individual and we she went on to the VA and is serving as their CIO now we've tried to hire an individual and months and months and months to find individuals who could do the data analytics that that you all depend on it and that we depend on for decision-making it took a very long time and we we finally have have one person on staff to do that work how much does she make I believe it's like 82 we we hired
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Chair Unverified 1:10:17
her from the Health Department okay we have one person at 82,000 and we're contracting this year after year at millions all right is this hitting your head i mean it doesn't make sense to me as a business person to to where you wouldn't in-house is
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Speaker 205 1:10:42
at some point it's it's a complicated um it's a complicated uh process they also receive our
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Speaker 72 1:10:48
qhp claims from for our home um it's you know we would love to have more in-house staff it's it's it's hard to hire in-house uh staff at the level that we need um at the salaries that we we have
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Speaker 193 1:11:02
i'm going to be quiet and see if anybody else has any
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:11:09
worries about this members any other questions for dhs y'all are off the hot seat for the moment i'm sure you will be back later but with that we're We're going to move on to Senator Hester, who has been waiting patiently, and I believe he's looking for the Department of Corrections.
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Senator Bart Hester Unverified 1:11:30
WellPath, if they were available, if not Department of Corrections.
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:11:38
Is there someone from WellPath here and the Department of Corrections? And if so, please come to the table and introduce yourself for the record. And Senator Hester, you're recognized. hello tawny ryle
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Chair Unverified 1:11:59
chief legal counsel department of corrections i'll just go ahead and say there's nobody from well path here today um but you've got uh probably the the b team from the rest of
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Senator Bart Hester Unverified 1:12:09
corrections over here so no uh that works and really my point i was hoping somebody was here because probably back in September or October, the last time we approved this, you know, three-comma contract, I had asked them directly. There was rumors and news articles about them going bankrupt. They sat right there and told me it wasn't going to happen. Literally a few weeks later, they filed bankruptcy. Are we the only state they're doing business in right now? They filed bankruptcy everywhere. Is there any confidence they can continue to honor a three-comma contract? Um,
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Chair Unverified 1:12:46
so as a person who's not an expert in bankruptcy law, I can tell you that their reorganization was confirmed last month. I think that was effective May 9th. It does still show open on the bankruptcy courts page, just because we have some pro se litigants, people who are incarcerated or formerly incarcerated, they get an extended period of time. Um, the conversations that we've had have indicated that they've come out of this better. They were able to cut some underperforming divisions um i am happy to get you whatever information they can give i'm sure they can speak much more intelligently on that than i can but i feel good we've not had a lot of vendor complaints um so we think that things are turning around for them
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Senator Bart Hester Unverified 1:13:30
so they're paying their vendors i i know they do hire arkansas employees when they're here um we had a lot of interest in subcontracting uh you know when it's a bill you know over a billion dollars of uh state state money uh the hope would be that they would try to work with some arkansas vendors are they doing that uh how has that looked like yes sir so they did
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Chair Unverified 1:13:54
identify a list of several contractors that we thought they could put bids out and try to get swapped over to arkansas-based contractors i'm not sure of the exact status on that but i know they've issued a few um and i can get that also for staff okay i mean you know this is
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Senator Bart Hester Unverified 1:14:12
uh you know i've been doing this a long time this is you know the largest contract that we've ever approved we we know all that i know members understand that uh very painful to see such a huge contract just get pushed out of state when there's got to be people in the state of arkansas
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:14:33
that can provide much of these services and i have a question so if we have a vendor come down here tell us they're not going to file bankruptcy not going to file bankruptcy and literally weeks after that testimony they file bankruptcy in my eyes they lied to the committee because they knew they were going to be filing bankruptcy and instead of be forthcoming they chose to lie now that doesn't put a lot of faith in me for a company to be able to work with integrity in the state of arkansas when they can't deal with us with integrity much less to be the one of the largest contracts that we've ever approved i mean i think this their past does not bode well for their future i guess is what I'm saying. And as someone who's approving these contracts, they need to come and answer questions about why they did what they did and why we think that they should continue in the state of Arkansas is my opinion. And I would suggest that they do that and have a representative here. Yes, ma'am. And
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Speaker 221 1:15:42
I will say that we have a new women's health unit opening and we'll have to do another contract amendment for
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Chair Unverified 1:15:48
that because it's going to be a pretty significant change in scope so that might be a really good opportunity to have them prepared to answer questions if that's
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:15:57
amenable. I would highly recommend that they be here. Yes ma'am thank you so much. Thank you. Senator Hester are you? I'm good for now. Senator Davis is for them or for somebody else? Okay
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Senator Breanne Davis Unverified 1:16:12
you're recognized. Thank you Madam Chair. Some of my questions were in line with that just the fact that they came to the committee, said that they were not in any financial trouble, and then literally weeks later filed for bankruptcy, came back again. They also committed to hiring some subcontractors here in Arkansas, but it's my understanding that there are not any subcontractors that they've agreed to contract with within this, and I would love for them to be here to answer to that. I mean, it's also my understanding that they're not saying that it's based on price, but sending letters out to vendors saying they went with someone that provided the best value um and that's very confusing to me when we're looking at you know when they committed to working with people here in arkansas and are not providing any reasonable explanation as to why they're not subcontracting with anybody here in arkansas um my last question really for them is if they're paying their bills now to jefferson county hospital i mean i think they've got huge bills that they owe that hospital and that hospital's in dire need of payment and they've been refusing to pay them for quite some time and my question for them that I would love for them to be here for especially when they're asking for an over billion dollar contract is if they're paying their bills to the hospital here in Arkansas that they owe. Do you guys know any
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Chair Unverified 1:17:35
status on that? Senator we do not know anything specifically about Jefferson County but I'm I can get that information and get it to you or staff if that's the preference
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Senator Breanne Davis Unverified 1:17:46
of the committee thank you those are my questions i have a i'd like to pull this to vote on this separate if this is the proper time to say that i'll take
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:17:56
your motion at the same time after i take thank you representative vots yes thank you thank y'all for coming down uh representative mix it's not is it for the department which department do you need representative mix building authority please uh does anybody hear from the building authority please and while they're coming up i
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Representative Stephen Meeks Unverified 1:18:16
have another question staff may be able to answer on a lot of these contracts we see there's a large federal match and the fed is you know providing sometimes 70 80 100 of these funds for these contracts um if something happens where that funding falls through is the state going to be on the hook for any of that money or is it understood that if that federal funding doesn't come through that the state is not going to be responsible for it because some of these contracts were extremely huge my understanding is representative
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Speaker 237 1:18:55
meeks is that we operate under the
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Speaker 16 1:18:58
assumption that if federal funding goes away it goes away and that's the end but i would defer to the agency to speak specifically on that so
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Representative Stephen Meeks Unverified 1:19:08
so would that be an agency
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Speaker 16 1:19:10
by agency question yes sir a great program but okay i think the general consensus is that as a state if federal funding is not supply ends it ends
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Representative Stephen Meeks Unverified 1:19:20
okay all right um so i'll let you introduce yourself for there
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Ann Laidlaw Unverified 1:19:24
and laidlaw director of division of building
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Representative Stephen Meeks Unverified 1:19:27
authority all right thank you miss laidlaw So my question is on number 39, it looks like we've got a starting at $240,000 contract for armed security for the old Army-Navy Hospital property in Hot Springs. I think I know what property that is, but is that property being used for anything? Is it just sitting vacant right now? Yes, sir, you're
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Ann Laidlaw Unverified 1:19:50
correct. That is the vacant Army-Navy Hospital in Hot Springs on Reserve Boulevard. The state is still custodian for that property. and we received a federal grant to maintain security and make some additional improvements on that property while working directly with the Secretary of Army on some improvements that requested. But that was through a federal grant, so that contract was newly let through the formal process to be effective July 1. It's actually the armed service that's currently on the property, so it will be a continuation, but it was done through a formal bid. So I guess my ultimate
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Representative Stephen Meeks Unverified 1:20:25
question that I'm getting at here is, are we going to do anything with that property or is it just going to be sitting and we're letting it go to waste or be dilapidated? I mean, is it time for us to go ahead and sell that property or divest
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Ann Laidlaw Unverified 1:20:43
in it or are we going to do something with it? There are lots of discussion about what to do with that property. the state does not have the ability to make those decisions right now because of the relationship or the manner in which the property was transferred to the state. There was a reversionary clause that says that when the state stops using that property for the purposes in which it was transferred, that it reverts back to the Army. They did not accept the property when we attempted that reversionary clause, So we are working directly with them in the meantime until those decisions can be made. But there are steps being taken to hopefully be able to move that decision along. I know our governor's office is directly involved with that. Our congressional delegates are also involved with that. How long has that been ongoing? It's been going. Well, those discussions have been going on for quite some time. I hear within the last year when we received this federal grant, it seems that we've picked up some momentum. So we have three years to make these improvements that are specific under the grant. The governor also has an opportunity during that period to make some requests of the Department Secretary of Army as well. So basically... We have this window of about three years, about two and a half years left. So at
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Representative Stephen Meeks Unverified 1:22:07
the end of that, it's going to go back to the federal government then, so it's not... It's
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Ann Laidlaw Unverified 1:22:12
not ours to sell at this point. that's correct okay
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Representative Stephen Meeks Unverified 1:22:16
my my main thing is i think it sounds like a money pit not trying to be saying anything bad about the property itself but it sounds like we're dumping money into a property that we have a no control over and are not going to get to keep so it's a difficult situation yes you can see where i'm going with this so anything we can do expedite to get that resolved as quickly as possible for the taxpayers definitely do so thank you yes
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:22:46
sir thank you members any other questions seeing none this is what I understand we're going to do we're going to review all the contracts for the out-of-state contracts with the exception of number seven and number ten without objection so be it now on number seven rep senator davis you're wanting that a separate vote are you wanting to hold it are you wanting to do a separate motion on that particular well um i mean i'd like
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Senator Breanne Davis Unverified 1:23:28
to hold it until we can get those answers from wellpath themselves if if that's the stronger thing to do rather than make a motion to consider it not reviewed to ensure that it doesn't pass on friday i mean i don't want it passing on friday and we still don't have any answers to these questions so you just want to hold
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:23:46
it to our next meeting which will be in august yes i do okay so we have that motion it's all in favor aye so be it there you be representative vaught
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Representative DeAnn Vaught Unverified 1:23:59
i want uh that same motion for uh item 10 so with item 10
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:24:06
which is the department of education's contract uh for the mental health mindset i think was the name the motion is that we are going to hold that till our next meeting which will be in august motion all in favor discussion on the motion representative i'm senator history you're recognized maybe if it'll yeah
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Senator Bart Hester Unverified 1:24:30
all right i would have asked this a while ago but um on the motion i thought we're going to do this on friday and uh problems you know there was a bill i passed involving mental health and teachers uh and students or students and teachers uh the governor vetoed it but we're aggressively working on some uh corrections to that right some if this was part of that i would just want to know that uh before i voted on it but rather than we just wait too much but i assume if it is and it's something we all agree with doing we could probably bring it up friday is it we still could right okay then i'm okay
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:25:12
okay so with that uh senator gilmore you're recognized yeah
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Senator Ben Gilmore Unverified 1:25:17
so i think i mean i don't know if dhs is still here but i i may have a question for them and i know we're it's not parliamentary correct to to do that because we're in discussion but maybe after this we have them coming back to the table but i think to the senator's point i think if we can let's hold this um for friday get the information we need and then move forward from there but again open to the whatever the will of the committee is okay so are you wanting
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:25:45
to make a substitute motion i'm not
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Senator Ben Gilmore Unverified 1:25:47
i'm not but i do want dhs to come back to the table
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:25:52
i think they will be back to the table here with another question perfect okay there we go okay so the motion just so everybody understands is that on the contract on number 10 which was with mindset that we will hold that until the next meeting which will be in august i have a motion in a second all in favor say aye opposed say nay all right that motion has carried also and with that i think that moves us down to item
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Speaker 5 1:26:27
d5 thank you madam chair on page 46 of item d you have the in-state contracts there are 99 in-state contracts for your review today number
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Speaker 36 1:26:37
one is with asu bb abm industry groups this is for custodial services on the asu bb and searcy campuses number two is with asu three rivers with pritchard industries this is also for custodial services contracts number three and four are both with the Department of Commerce with for marketing and advertising one contract is with Cranford Johnson Robinson and Woods and the other is with Social Innovation LLC number five this is with AEDC with Startup Junkie Consulting this is an amending an existing contract for the Innovate Arkansas program which supports entrepreneurship and business growth in the state number six with Department of Commerce, DWS, with best janitorial. This is janitor services for the DWS-owned building. Number seven, Department of Commerce with DWS with quality security services for security guard services in their buildings. Number eight, Department of Corrections, Division of Community Corrections with Phoenix Recovery Center. This is for transitional housing. Number nine, also with Division of Community Correction with Safe Haven Ministries. This is for a 20-bed female transitional facility in clarksville arkansas page 49 item number 10 with division of corrections this is with farm brothers flyers this is for aerial application services crop dusting number 11
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Speaker 5 1:28:02
division of correction with lemas e pratt for crop hauling for the tucker unit farm
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Speaker 36 1:28:09
contracts number 12 and 13 are both with the department of education arkansas schools for the blind and for the deaf with village travel these contracts are for busing services for those schools number 14 is with the department of health with sns management group this is for security guard services for the local health offices and the department of health offices contracts number 15 and 16 are both with the state board of nursing these are individuals who provide investigations for the board of nursing number 17 is with dhs with sausalena k madison she provides marshallese language interpreter services for dhs number 18 is with dhs division of aging adults and behavioral health with erisa health this
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Speaker 5 1:28:58
is a comprehensive substance abuse treatment services contract amendment number seven on page 53 of item d beginning with contract number 19 and going all the way to contract number 32 which is on page ends on page 66 these are all contracts for
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Speaker 36 1:29:19
the community mental health centers across the state various providers different geographical locations all providing the community
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Speaker 5 1:29:28
mental health centers that takes us all the way over page 66 on item D that's number 32 and this is another grouping that I want to point
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Speaker 36 1:29:44
out to you all beginning with contract 32 and going all the way to 43 these are all providers around the state providing qualified residential
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Speaker 5 1:29:55
treatment program services for DCFS and that takes us over to page 73 on page 73 we have contract number 44 and 45 with DHS DCFS both of these contracts are with Harbor House and these
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Speaker 36 1:30:19
are for substance abuse services and substance abuse treatment services for dcfs clients next we have contracts number 46 through 48 these are three contracts that dcfs has with a company called hlh consultant and this company provides adoption summaries counseling services and home studies for the dcfs number 49 with dhs dcfs with housley and reeves these also provide counseling services number 50 with dcfs they have a contract with immerse arkansas and this is a supervised independent living program housed here in
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Speaker 5 1:31:01
litter rock that takes us to page 76 of item d dcfs has a
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Speaker 36 1:31:09
contract with the low note county task force on child abuse and this is for qualified residential treatment programs for DCFS clients statewide. Number 52 with DCFS, with the Northwest Arkansas Children's Shelter, this is for private licensed placement agencies that provide foster care services in family homes. Number 53 through number 55 are all three qualified residential treatment programs with Ouachita Children's Center, Piney Ridge, and Fayetteville. That takes us over to page 79 in item D. This is DHS-DCFS with Psychological Care Center. This is Psychological Evaluation Services for DCFS clients. Number 57 and number 58 are both for Substance Abuse Treatment Services. These are new original contracts with Recovery Centers of Arkansas and Rediscovered Counseling and Wellness. number 59 is with riverview behavioral health this is for a comprehensive residential treatment service program number 60 is an original contract with southern christian home for foster care services and family homes number 61 with still waters consulting group also dcfs this is for psychological evaluations for dsf clients in a specific county area number 62 is for substance
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Speaker 5 1:32:43
abuse treatment services that takes us to page 82 of item d beginning on number 63 and going all the way over to
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Speaker 36 1:32:55
76 on page 89 these are all providers that dcfs uses for qualified residential treatment services comprehensive residential treatment services and that takes us over to page number 90. number 77 is with the division of county operations with ojs service two incorporated this is janitorial services for the dhs mississippi county office number 78 is dhs dds with central arkansas development this is for day treatment transportation in benton arkansas number 79 with dds with howard psychological consulting services this is psychology services at the southeast arkansas human development center contracts number 80 through 82 are all contracts with the division of medical
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Speaker 5 1:33:54
services with the arkansas foundation for medical care the first one is amendment 11 to an existing contract and they provide medical review services the second one is amendment four
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Speaker 36 1:34:08
and in this contract they provide medicaid beneficiary relations and provider relation services and then they have a new original contract for improving the quality of care to arkansas medicaid beneficiaries by identifying areas for quality improvement contract number 83 is with the division of youth services with very lloyd presbyterian family services this provides residential group homes for male juveniles in dys custody page 93 of contract number 84 with the arkansas crime information center with mainstream technologies this is for ongoing support of the arkansas sex offender registry contract number 85 is the department of veterans affairs with med link this is for contracted nursing services in the veterans homes specifically for the north litter rock veterans home number 86 on page 94 is with phillips county community college with u.s lawns this is for landscaping services at the school number 88 is with the university of arkansas with deloitte consulting this is the final contract you
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Speaker 5 1:35:13
previously saw the list of seven of their on-call research and advancement consultants this is the last one with deloitte it is in state in Bentonville.
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Speaker 36 1:35:26
Contract number 88 is with Environmental Enterprise Group. This is an original contract with on-call environmental services with facilities management. Number 89 is with Pulaski Tech for general electrical maintenance projects. Also contracts number 90 through 93 are all with Pulaski Tech. These are all related to HVAC system repairs, electrical system repairs and on contract number 93 with Pulaski Tech they're contracting contracting with Johnson Controls fire protection and they are installing a campus-wide exterior lockdown system contract number 94 is with the UA Fort Smith with Western Arkansas counseling and guidance this is to provide on-site university counseling for UA Fort Smith UA Little Rock with BFI Waste services. This is an original contract for solid waste and trash removal. 96 with UA Pine Bluff with janitorial doctors. This is for cleaning services in the university's dormitories. Number 97 is with UAMS and Forvis. This will provide an annual audit of UAMS's scope and objectives in their contract agreements. Number
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Speaker 5 1:36:45
98 is University of Central Arkansas with Grant Daniel Consulting. This individual will provide the arkansas coding academy courses and number 99 is with uca with stevens insurance the company
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Speaker 36 1:37:00
will perform an evaluation of overall insurance benefits
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:37:03
these are the in-state contracts madam chair thank you very much um before we get started back on dhs i have a quick question for the aedc somebody from the department of
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Speaker 256 1:37:36
commerce ac jake winley legislative affairs department of commerce
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Speaker 257 1:37:39
jennifer emerson deputy director aedc espinanza crane director of small business and
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:37:47
entrepreneurship development aedc Thank you all for being here. On Startup Junkie, that is the company that is managing what used to be was Innovate AR program. Exactly what
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Speaker 258 1:38:00
are they doing? So this is the state's technology commercialization contract, and the focus and the goal of the program is to develop our technology and technology-based startups in the entire state. so their services range from providing coaching consulting training access to capital to various startups in the state okay and i i
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:38:20
think they're an llc but they're also a non-profit by that name also so is there any conflict are they awarding monies to themselves through um in terms of their structure i
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Speaker 258 1:38:34
can't speak to it i know there i mean there is a an llc and then there's a non-profit um and we have a representative as well i can speak to it but
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:38:45
yeah but i'm just wanting to make sure that if we've got somebody overseeing a program are they awarding themselves money through this program i
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Speaker 257 1:38:55
guess is what my my question is the the funding through this contract is to pay
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Speaker 263 1:39:01
for their services it's not to award funding to different programs themselves like they're we're not outsourcing the funding of a grant through this program they're actually providing those technical services and that's paying for salaries and things like that to provide those services
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:39:16
and what services are they in particular providing
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Speaker 263 1:39:19
for this million dollars that that technical assistance that um coaching companies from or entrepreneurs through inception startups um business plans how you get capital how you you know grow your business connect and all of that mentorship is is those are those services that they provide and how many startups have they
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:39:41
helped to get startup and actually running in the state um so we're working on an
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Speaker 258 1:39:47
honor report we actually had a meeting today you know they the contract started last year and i would say um we are at about 120 or so startups that they have helped in addition to working closely with us they also work with our accelerator programs you know they partner with several of our partners so it's a very cohesive relationship and and very intricate that we're really trying to push to push
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:40:14
forward and what do these startups range from i mean what do how many jobs are they you know providing and actually developing for the
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Speaker 258 1:40:22
communities it varies you know it can be from a founder which is just one person all the way to I don't know give and take average you know 10 a dozen individuals I would say you know at the most
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Senator Mark Johnson Unverified 1:40:39
yes okay thank you thank you appreciate you I send my questions with that that's all I've got and I'm sure represent a painter you're wanting DHS okay rip thank you thank y'all can anyone from DHS please come back to the
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:41:02
table and if you will introduce yourself for
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Speaker 72 1:41:16
the record Nell Smith a deputy director division of medical services and I assume the questions that are going to be about the division rather than some other divisions
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:41:24
painter it's actually for the division of medical services that's me thank you
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Representative Stetson Painter Unverified 1:41:34
madam chair and this is in the regards contracts 80 81 82 with the arkansas bound foundation for medical care um can you can you tell me a little information about that organization i'm right here right in front of you straight right here sorry no you're good we all look
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Speaker 72 1:41:55
alike um yes the arkansas foundation for medical care is a i believe it's a non-profit that is a qualified improvement organization and they they do a number of things for us these contracts They are doing prior authorizations for us for Medicaid, utilization review, retrospective reviews to make sure that claims are being paid appropriately. And they do a lot of provider outreach for us. They do beneficiary education.
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Speaker 273 1:42:31
Are you not able to do provider outreach yourselves at
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Speaker 72 1:42:36
DHS? we we do we I mean we work with them to to do the provider education so there there's various kinds of provider education you know we do official notices to providers that's that's something that we do ourselves but they they set up webinars when we have a change for example we've recently had a change in our presumptive eligibility so they've they put together the webinar so that we can send that out to
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Representative Stetson Painter Unverified 1:43:07
providers so that they understood so can you explain to me like on contract 82 and like i'm from the ozark mountains so it's hard for me to understand some of this language here and how much money it's going to cost us to like 82 it says to establish a contract improving the quality of arkansas medicaid beneficiaries by identifying potential areas for
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Speaker 272 1:43:30
quality improvement can you please explain to me
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Speaker 72 1:43:33
what that is for 1.8 million dollars? Yes, sir. That is a combination of things. One is our inpatient quality improvement initiative. So they are setting targets for inpatient care and calculating whether the hospitals that are making those improvements. They also help us with our PCMH program that's the patient-centered medical home program and and that requires individuals the individual providers to have certain things like 24 7 phone access so they AFMC assures that they are doing those things that they're required to do to receive the PCMH funds so the and they do they we pick an education topic for them to cover so that we can improve the quality of care okay thank you and in
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Representative Stetson Painter Unverified 1:44:30
since I may be the only one green light I'm out of chair if you give me a little attitude so then on contract 80 you know we're making an amendment of 3.8 million dollars we've already paid to date 33 million performance indicators for utilization review retrospect dumb
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Speaker 72 1:44:50
that down? So this is the PA, the prior authorization contract. So they, we have prior authorizations for services and they are assessing whether the clients are, should be receiving those services or not. They do that for inpatient and outpatient, durable medical equipment and physician assisted um uh physician um uh yes um and and they also do retrospective reviews so after the fact they're they're going through for ed uh emergency department hospital admissions um and provider preventable preventable conditions are are the claims that we've paid out were those appropriate and if not we recoup those those back so the 3.8 million dollars is it's an ongoing service so it's it's something that they're that we need and we're doing um ongoing and the reason that it's 3.8 rather than um seven is because it's a it we're it's a um half of a year because we're
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Representative Stetson Painter Unverified 1:45:54
about to put that out for bid so and i just want to make sure because it close it's close to total of what we paid today close to 50 million dollars of taxpayer money there is no way in the world that dhs could have done any of this i mean because i mean i understand that you know this company has former leadership at dhs so it looks like to my eyes that you know somebody worked there and created a model and and guess what tapped into some taxpayer dollars and so i guess i'm curious Would it not be easier for DHS if we're able to do
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Senator Breanne Davis Unverified 1:46:31
that less than 50 million? Thank you for the question. I think the expertise, the network of clinicians, the peer-to-peer review when prioritization and utilization management are reviewed, it's not just a number or not just the cost of the claim. It's also a peer-to-peer review of the clinical services. we at DHS do not have on staff the clinical team and by putting this out to bid we have access to the clinicians that are Arkansas licensed and based to do the peer-to-peer work that is a large piece of the cost okay thank you madam chair I'll stand out I have
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:47:13
I have a question you talked about recouping some of the I guess payments if they were paid improperly do we have any idea how much money they've recouped us I don't have that off the top
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Speaker 270 1:47:27
of my head but we that is could you get
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:47:29
that for us by Friday so we know how much right there were actually paying but they're actually getting us money back thank you our senator Johnson you're recognized
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Chair Unverified 1:47:39
does UAMS have that peer-to-peer peer ability to review i
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Senator Breanne Davis Unverified 1:47:47
don't know that i can answer for uams but uams's claims are also part of that peer-to-peer review as all the other hospitals and clinicians so some of their clinicians could participate on different claims that would not be uams claims i would have to
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:48:04
defer to UAMS on that. I'm going to, I don't know what Representative Painter is going to ask, but that was on 80. Now they also have contract 81 and 82. Can you explain
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Speaker 72 1:48:23
the differences between those two for us? Yes, ma'am. The 80 is the one that I was just mentioning about the PAs and the and the retrospective reviews 81 is our beneficiary relations and provider relations contract that's they they run a call center for us that where beneficiaries can call and get their questions answered and then the 82 is the one that I mentioned earlier with the hospital the in the inpatient quality improvement program and the PCMH so basically they're running a claims department for y'all no they're not running our claims department they're running the the call center and they're running some other um quality improvement programs they're they're not running our claims center okay but you
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:49:11
just said someone could call if they
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Speaker 72 1:49:13
had a question about their claim yes ma'am they they can the beneficiaries can call uh if they have a question about eligibility or or claims or anything it's it's the beneficiary call center okay so that our our mmis system uh is the is the um the billing center okay yes
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:49:34
so is this by call or is it just a flat fee how how do they actually charge the state is it by how many people call or is it by just i have a flat fee and this is what i'm going to get doesn't matter if it's one call or 10 million calls each service
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Senator Breanne Davis Unverified 1:49:53
area has budget lines we can get you those details there there could be a section where it is by call center I don't have those details in front of me but there are multiple pieces to the scope of work that get priced out differently and have different deliverables for them to be met to be paid okay if you don't mind
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:50:10
get that for us so we can kind of understand how they're getting paid uh any other questions members uh representative i mean senator johnson
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Speaker 193 1:50:22
you're recognized so between these
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Chair Unverified 1:50:25
two that's you know state money since 22 it's probably pushing 100 million dollars and that's not including the federal money uh that's another they're almost, you know, that's a lot of money. So if the feds will pay for you guys to contract this, will they not, in the same grant process or whatever this is, do it, allow you to get the expertise in-house and form these in your own body rather than continue to contract? yes sir we if if we
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Senator Breanne Davis Unverified 1:51:09
chose to do this in-house this is a renewal for a contract that was bid upon yes it could be done in-house or by contract and it would still have be matchable for state and federal
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Speaker 273 1:51:35
funds okay Painter recognized hey y'all ever gave it a five-second thought about doing it in-house and
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Senator Breanne Davis Unverified 1:51:44
I don't know all of the history of the contract or or when this was bid out and so I can't speak to if it was ever discussed on being in-house or not at the inception and I do know that with looking at this contract we have recognized the size of it we have recognized that we need some different things in the next iteration be that in-house or be a contract said we that like miss Smith said we are looking at re you know rebidding and how that would look so we've done that piece I don't know that we've had a conversation recently
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Representative Stetson Painter Unverified 1:52:26
about taking it in-house I would also like to is just just curious if you can give a white page of the list of work that they've actually performed yes sir yes sir we can get
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Speaker 261 1:52:40
that I was making notes thank you thank you madam chair
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:52:51
members any other questions seeing none dollar off out of the hot seat and with objection we're gonna say these contracts have represented painter
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Representative Stetson Painter Unverified 1:53:03
you're recognized I think while we're getting that information and everything else I'd like to make a motion that we at least hold this contract until Friday at least to see that information and then as a committee if that's not sufficient then maybe we can look at maybe
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Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified 1:53:21
holding it until the next meeting okay so without Without objection, we're going to review all the contracts except 80, 81, and 82, correct? Correct. All right. Second. All in favor? It don't matter. With no objection. The motion we have is that we were going to hold contracts 80, 81, and 82 until Friday. Do we have a second? Second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Okay. Thank you. That's what we'll do. then we've got our monthly reports does anybody have any questions on the monthly reports seeing none miss katie you got anything to add we are adjourned You
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Agenda

A. Call to Order - Comments from Chairs

0:57

B. Methods of Finance

2:50

C. Discretionary Grants

7:29

D. Services Contracts for Legislative Review/RFQ Approvals

12:44

E. Reports and Communications

1:54:03

F. Other Business

1:54:10

G. Adjournment

1:54:12

Speakers

Representative Frances Cavenaugh Chair Unverified
102 segments
Speaker 4
1 segment
Speaker 5
64 segments
Speaker 7
5 segments
Chair Unverified
18 segments
Speaker 18
1 segment
Representative Lane Jean Unverified
3 segments
Speaker 26
3 segments
Speaker 36
54 segments
Speaker 52
4 segments
Senator Joshua Bryant Unverified
55 segments
Representative Mindy McAlindon Unverified
4 segments
Speaker 69
2 segments
Speaker 70
1 segment
Speaker 64
1 segment
Speaker 72
21 segments
Speaker 80
1 segment
Representative DeAnn Vaught Unverified
25 segments
Speaker 98
7 segments
Speaker 104
4 segments
Speaker 120
1 segment
Speaker 125
2 segments
Speaker 126
1 segment
Senator Breanne Davis Unverified
37 segments
Speaker 148
1 segment
Representative Mary Bentley Unverified
2 segments
Speaker 155
1 segment
Representative Stetson Painter Unverified
14 segments
Speaker 158
1 segment
Representative Joy Springer Unverified
3 segments
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr. Unverified
6 segments
Senator Mark Johnson Unverified
4 segments
Senator Ben Gilmore Unverified
4 segments
Speaker 189
1 segment
Speaker 132
1 segment
Speaker 199
1 segment
Speaker 200
2 segments
Speaker 205
2 segments
Speaker 193
2 segments
Senator Bart Hester Unverified
11 segments
Speaker 221
1 segment
Representative Stephen Meeks Unverified
13 segments
Speaker 237
1 segment
Speaker 16
2 segments
Ann Laidlaw Unverified
7 segments
Speaker 256
1 segment
Speaker 257
2 segments
Speaker 258
6 segments
Speaker 263
2 segments
Speaker 273
2 segments
Speaker 272
1 segment
Speaker 270
1 segment
Speaker 261
1 segment