Fed up with slow-to-arrive Medicaid payments and a “dysfunctional” managed care system, one Arkansas provider is striking back.
Attorneys filed suit last Tuesday against the state, aiming to halt payment to Arkansas’ managed care insurers. Little Rock, AR-based Home to Community Living is seeking class-action status for the complaint, with 40,000 Medicaid recipients who have significant mental illnesses or developmental disabilities affected by the delayed payments since March 1.
“A catastrophic failure of major proportions began on day one and has interrupted care to tens of thousands of recipients and hundreds of providers on a state-wide scale,” Attorney Luther Sutter said in the lawsuit.
Sutter is also asking a judge to declare the managed-care system too “unprepared and dysfunctional to adequately provide services to Medicaid beneficiaries in this state,” the Arkansas Democrat Gazette reported Sunday.
The lawsuit noted that Home to Community Living had provided more than $100,000 in services to its clients since March 1, but was paid only $31,000 by managed care. No checks were received during all of last month and HCL was forced to miss payroll because of the “tremendous financial hardship” placed on the provider. Sutter claims that the managed care companies’ goal is to reduce the number of providers in Arkansas by restricting payment “until some cannot survive.”
