By Rose Hoban
In one of the first acts of the new legislative session, House Republicans have filed a bill to fix the funding problem that has loomed over group homes for people with intellectual and mental health disabilities since last summer.
House Bill 5 gives group homes access to money set aside during last year’s legislative session to help adult care homes weather transitions in the state’s Medicaid reimbursement for personal care services provided in the homes.
“Whoo hoo,” said Julia Adams, with a smile. Adams is the assistant director of governmental affairs for the Arc of North Carolina, and advocates for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
“Seriously, we’re very pleased with the actions taken by Representatives Dollar, Burr, and House Speaker Tillis for quickly addressing the crisis for people in group homes and our people who live in them with mental health issues and developmental disabilities,” Adams said.
“They said they’d do it on the first day, and they did,” she said.
The bill allows owners of group homes to tap into a $39.7 million fund established in last year’s budget bill that is intended to help adult care homes remain solvent as they adjust to changes in the state’s Medicaid program. But a last minute change to that bill excluded group home operators from tapping into the fund.
Rep. Nelson Dollar (R-Cary), said the bill heads to the appropriations committee Wednesday evening and then back to the House floor on Thursday to be voted on. Then it will go to the Senate side of the legislative building.
In December, former governor Bev Perdue found $1 million in temporary money to keep the group homes funded through the end of January. Once February begins, owners will not be able to bill for personal care services such as assistance bathing, dressing, feeding and toileting.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You are free to use NC Health News content under the following conditions:
- You can copy and paste this html tracking code into articles of ours that you use, this little snippet of code allows us to track how many people read our story.
- Please do not reprint our stories without our bylines, and please include a live link to NC Health News under the byline, like this:
By Jane Doe
North Carolina Health News - Finally, at the bottom of the story (whether web or print), please include the text:
North Carolina Health News is an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit, statewide news organization dedicated to covering all things health care in North Carolina. Visit NCHN at northcarolinahealthnews.org. (on the web, this can be hyperlinked)