Mental Health Provider Shuts Doors After State Pulls Medicaid payments
Last updated Wednesday, July 2, 2008 9:47 PM CDT in News
By James Jefferson
The Morning News
LITTLE ROCK - A Southeast Arkansas child mental health provider closed its doors Wednesday, a day after a judge cleared the way for the state to terminate Medicaid payments to the center.
Lawyers for Gilead Family Resource Center, a McGehee-based provider cited by the state for billing irregularities and improper medical practices, had argued in court last week that the center could not survive without Medicaid payments covering treatment for the bulk of its patients.
Pulaski County Circuit Judge Jay Moody advised lawyers in a brief letter Tuesday he was dissolving a temporary restraining order he issued June 6 that blocked the state Department of Human Services from cutting off payments to Gilead.
The department moved quickly to terminate the payments to the company, which operated seven centers in four southeastern Arkansas cities.
"Without those funds we cannot pay our employees," Gilead co-owner Chuck Gibson of Dermott said Wednesday. "They are all closed. There is no business."
Moody's earlier order allowed Gilead to receive Medicaid reimbursements while appealing the department's decision to terminate payments. Lawyers for Gilead filed an administrative appeal Wednesday with the department.
In a June 2007 audit, just weeks before Gibson and others bought Gilead, the state questioned the appropriateness of some clients' diagnoses and medications and found billing problems that included multiple charges for services to the same client.
Auditors also found the center used uncertified staff for counseling and therapy services and said there appeared to be no oversight of services by a child psychiatrist.
"We knew there was an audit in place at the time we became owners. However, we had no idea and no expectation there would be this kind of action by the state, which we consider reckless," Gibson said Wednesday. "We have clients right now banging on our doors that have met with the department and expressed their feelings. We know that those people have needs but we're powerless to do anything about it at this point in time."
Spokeswoman Julie Munsell said Gilead was reimbursed about $80,000 a week for providing mental health services to about 430 clients, mostly preschool children. The department may try to recover the $160,000 or so the center received after Moody's initial order, along with the more than $800,000 the agency contends it is due from alleged billing irregularities, she said.
Gilead operated two centers in both Hamburg and McGehee, and one each in Dumas, Lake Village and Monticello.
Other providers in the area are prepared to absorb Gilead's clients, Munsell said, if it is determined they need care after a re-evaluation.
Before the state sanctions, Gilead provided treatment for nine children in state custody. After those children were moved and re-evaluated, just two were deemed to need any sort of continued treatment, Munsell said.
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