Supervisors Plan Exit For Case Management Workers
Oskaloosa, Iowa – Iowans who are on Medicaid have been facing many changes since the State of Iowa implemented a privatization plan in an effort to save money.
Those changes have prompted many different responses from Iowans, especially those impacted by the changes.
Iowa’s Governor Terry Branstad led the charge to privatize the process, expressing the desire to save the state money. The Medicaid program in Iowa serves 600,000 Iowans as well as the Hawk-I program.
According to a recent poll from the Des Moines Register, it shows that more than 33% of Iowans say the change has been bad, while 13% of the same sample said the change was good. Fifty-four percent of Iowans are unsure about the change.
AmeriHealth Caritas has announced that they will be taking over case management for those under their plans. This would take the local connection that many with mental illness have had with their caseworkers for decades, and transfer it to someone outside the community.
In Mahaska County, around 85 individuals are served by the county’s case managers, which include three full time and one part time. Those case managers help assess and coordinate services and needs, which range from home health resources to transportation and skilled health care.
Doland said that it appeared that AmeriHealth Caritas was “definitely going to take all of our case management clients.”
Doland said they are not sure when that would happen, “They’ve sent out letters, initial letters saying that’s going to happen, but they haven’t said exactly when and how quickly.”
“There’s been a lot of angst about not only in the clients that we’re sharing, that we’re serving. We’re trying to make sure we have a lot of, make sure we have a lot of input from everybody, and we’ve talked to the county attorney, and it seems like the easiest and the cleanest way to do this so that everybody, it’ll be more of a natural change, is that, we set a date, rather than just umm, have a transition period waiting for them. Most, a lot of case managements that Heather has been in contact with, some of them have already shut down, some of them were done at the end of April. Some of them are done at the end of June. And so what we wanted to do, was to, um, set a date that transitions the cases over to AmeriHealth Caritas and work with them,” said Doland.
Doland said such a decision would give the county employees a “definite day” for preparations for other employment.
Doland said that the desire of the county was then to close Mahaska County case management on June 15th, 2017, with the staff members remaining until the end of June 2017 in order to finish up any unforeseen business during that time.
If AmeriHealth Caritas were to take on the client load before that date, Doland said they would “effectively be done” and then give employees two weeks of “cleanup time” after that.
Doland’s motion stated that the county send notice to AmeriHealth Caritas that case management in Mahaska County will be done June 15th. The motion also stated that if AmeriHealth Caritas took over the cases before said date, employees would remain two weeks past that date.
The motion passed on a unanimous vote.
Editing by Ginger Allsup
