Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee - Joint
Video
Transcript
Machine transcript
May contain errors. Verify important quotations against the official video.
About transcript accuracy
- Source
- Whisper
- Model
- ggml-large-v3-turbo.bin
- Processing date
- October 4, 2026
Unknown speaker
0:00
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
3:00
If y'all want to grab your seats, we're going to get started. Representative Eubanks, would you open us up in prayer?
Speaker 2
3:30
Any decision that we will be enforced, if I will, we pray these things in the name of our son,
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
3:40
Jesus Christ, amen. Amen. All right, committee, I need a motion on the minutes. A motion, a second. All those in favor, say aye. All opposed, ayes have it. With that, we'll move on to C, Ms. Paula Stone. Talk about the emergency rule on hospital-based residential treatment.
You would introduce yourself for the record
Chair
Unverified
4:12
and you're welcome to begin. Good afternoon. Paula Stone. I'm the director of the Office of Substance Abuse and Mental Health at Department of Human Services. So this is an emergency rule that was heard by ALC last week. The permanent rule is out for public comment and the public comment will be completed on the 6th of this month. But this rule is for adolescent residential substance use disorder
treatment services in a hospital setting. So this allows Medicaid to pay for service within a unit of a general hospital. We are doing for ages 12 and above and adolescents only. We have one hospital that is opening a unit, and that is Unity Hospital in Searcy. I can accept any questions you might have.
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
5:11
Just have a quick question. Beyond the one hospital, are there others that, if they choose to open,
would also be able to be under this? Yes, so they would
Chair
Unverified
5:24
get, they would be licensed through the Arkansas Department of Health. That's who does the licensure there. They would license as a specific unit within a hospital that's separate from their other units, and Medicaid would be able to pay for those services. Okay, thank you.
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
5:45
Representative Bentley, you're recognized. Thank you, Chair. Just real quick, I was trying to look
Chair
Unverified
5:54
through here. What's the length of stay? Is the length of stay predetermined? It isn't predetermined, so we are using the American Association of Substance Medicine, Substance Abuse Medicine, it's called ASAM, so it's a criteria that determines what level somebody needs and for how long they need it, and that would be between the vendor that
does our utilization review. Right now it's a Cintra, actually AFMC on the hospital side. And so they would receive an authorization request from the hospital unit. They would give a diagnosis and what that individual needed. Generally, talking to Unity Hospital, they're expecting about a 30 or 45 day length of stay. But that's not a cap. There's no cap on that. Okay, great.
Representative Wayne Long
Unverified
6:46
representative long you recognize thank you mr. chairman what's the cost per day projected to be
Chair
Unverified
6:59
at the unity hospital yes sir we have proposed a rate of eight hundred and fifty dollars a day to cms to the centers for medicare and medicaid services so we're waiting on approval from them on that bed day rate. And I
Representative Wayne Long
Unverified
7:15
think you said in the last meeting that we had with you
they won't have maybe 20 slots at that hospital? 24. They're opening
Chair
Unverified
7:24
up 24. They're doing 12 adolescent boys and 12 adolescent girls. So they're doing units, and they have some shared space. So they're doing that, plus they have a school on site in that unit so they don't miss any
Representative Wayne Long
Unverified
7:39
school time. And does Medicaid not pay like in these other type of treatment facilities, the private type of facilities? I'm not familiar with it, so if you could introduce that to me.
Chair
Unverified
7:56
type for substance use disorder services for adolescents, for residential services that Medicaid reimburses. We reimburse for psychiatric services, so mental health services, and in psychiatric hospitals or in psychiatric residential treatment facilities, but they don't treat substance use. They may treat it kind of secondarily if there's something going on, but this is specific for substance use disorder services, and this will be our first Medicaid-reimbursed one.
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
8:25
Thank you, ma'am. Representative Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Chair. The 800 and something that you just said is the average daily stay. How do we know if that is in
Speaker 9
8:43
line with the actual cost for that stay? Yes, we did. When we
Chair
Unverified
8:46
proposed 850 a day, that is a hospital daily rate for a hospital service. And so we believe that's in line with what the cost is going to be. Okay. Thank you.
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
8:59
See enough other questions. We'll move on to the next item. Committee on the next item, my wife
Speaker 7
9:05
works for a personal care agency, so I'm going to recuse and let Senator Irvin chair this portion.
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
9:20
All right, if you'll come to the table and state your name, please.
Speaker 33
9:27
Then you may proceed. Good afternoon, Elizabeth Pittman, Division of Medical Services.
Today we're presenting a rule for electronic visit verification for in-home personal care and attendant care and respite care, as well as home health services. You have already approved our rule overall for electronic visit verification. It is a way in which we verify the services, the start date, start time, end time date, place of service, and recipient and provider. It complies with the federal law, the 21st Century Cures Act, and we've been compliant with that for several years now. This rule is updating the requirements for that to clarify, make sure we're compliant, and to add some ability to audit and do corrective action plans for those providers.
The federal government will institute what they call KPIs, or minimum requirements, of claims that can be submitted electronically versus manually. We still have a lot of providers that are doing manual entry, and so we're trying to increase the number of electronically submitted claims, and so this rule will help with that. It does allow us to do corrective action plans with those providers if they are doing too many manual claims Additionally, we are also removing the requirement to submit a w-9 form for provider enrollment and that has caused several
Issues over the past year several years and this will allow us to actually do some automatic Verifications with IRS because they will no longer have to submit those w-9 forms as part
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
10:53
of their enrollment application and happy to take any questions Are there any questions from members of the committee? federal law requires us to provide for the evv correct yes ma'am okay even though within your rule they can choose to use a third party vendor but the federal law requires us to have one in
Speaker 33
11:11
place yes we've chosen a system called an open system where they can use ours or they can provide their own and many choose the one that is either integrated into their electronic health records or they were using prior to us offering
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
11:25
a state okay thank you any other questions from members of the committee all right seeing none thank you this rule stands reviewed thank you is there any other business to come mr. chair all right and I'll turn it back over to you to gobble out
Chair
Unverified
11:40
see enough other business and no other discussions we stand adjourned
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Consideration to Approve the June 3, 2026, Meeting Minutes [Exhibit B]
C. Discussion of Emergency Rules on Hospital Based Residential Treatment for Substance Use Disorder [Exhibit C] ̶ Paula Stone, Director, Office of Substance Abuse and Mental Health, Department of Human Services (DHS)
D. DHS, Division of Medical Services (DMS), Review of Rule, Electronic Visit Verification (EVV) for In-Home Personal Care, Attendant Care, Respite Care, and Home Health [Exhibit D] ̶ Elizabeth Pitman, Director, DMS, DHS
E. Other Business
F. Adjournment
Documents
No documents posted.
Speakers
Representative Jeff Wardlaw
Unverified
Speaker 2
Chair
Unverified
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
Speaker 9
Representative Wayne Long
Unverified
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
Speaker 7
Speaker 33