Thursday, July 2, 2009

New resources uploaded to Scribd

I've uploaded some newer documents to Scribd. 1. CMS in March of this year updated their database for the number of children eligible for EPSDT, at least as of 2007. One report is national in scope, the other breaks it down by state. Figures are provide by the states. There are no budgetary figures at all. Even with the states having the benefit of filling out the forms themselves, the national study still shows that nationally only about 58% of the 31.5 children eligible for participation actually received any service. The older the child got, the lower the chance was that they were receiving services at all. 2. A GAO report published this April discusses the needs for transparency and accountability in state use of ARRA funds, including the FMAP funding for medicaid. Interestingly, the report also mentions that state officials were concerned the additional federal funding didn't include enough money to pay for more state employees to provide oversight of all the new programs. 3. A number of local reports have been published showing that medicaid home and community support programs are much more cost efficient than the only alternative, institutionalization. Reports range from a Washington, D.C. report released in April 2009, to a 2000 report from New York. There's also an NIH report from 2003 showing the same thing. 4. This is an interesting document I found on George Washington University's website, but can't find was it was linked to. It has a state by state listing of language with regard to EPSDT services that must be included in a state's contract with a Managed Care Organization. The wording is great; it's just the lack of monitoring and enforcement that's the problem. 5. Here's an undated working draft from CMS of a brochure on how to strengthen state medicaid waiver HCBS services. 6. A wonderful report from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid stating in very clear language what the purposes and benefits are of EPSDT. 7. Here's another article from the GWU website, with EPSDT language to be included in every state's EPSDT RFP. Happy reading.

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About Me

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I'm the mom of a child with disabilities. Hannah's first neurologist said she might never develop beyond the level of a 2 month old infant, and there wasn't anything I could do about it. The brain damage was just too severe. Nine years later, she walks, uses a touchscreen computer and I've just been shown she can learn to construct sentences and do simple math with the right piece of technology. Along the way, I discovered I needed to teach myself what Hannah's rights to services really were. Learning about early intervention services led to reading about IDEA and then to EPSDT. I've been waiting for the Obama administration to realize the power and potential of EPSDT for the medical rights - including the right to stay at home with their families - of children with disabilities. The health reform people talk about long term care, and the disability people talk about education and employment, but nobody is talking about EPSDT. So I am.