Fort Smith Fights AIDS, Inc.

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When I said “WOW” the other day in regard to the contracted physicians that are treating patients across Arkansas (six in number), I was wondering what happened to the remaining 52 that I had in the Northwest sector alone! This means that I have people seeing physicians that refused to sign a contract with The State, and consequently, their patients are having to pay their own way toward medical help. By putting a restriction on which physician a person may go to makes You-Know-Who become a barrier to care. (I mean……6 physicians in the ENTIRE state??? Come on now!)

Let’s look at the dental situation: Eight dentists who signed contracts with the state. Eight for the entire state! I used to have around 40 just for the Northwestern area. I turned in all the names, but apparently they didn’t want to participate in this program, or (most likely) they didn’t want to have to deal with The State. The only solution to helping people with dental expenses now is to ship them around the state like baggage to any contracted dentist that can perform the needed procedures on them. Perhaps a contract with UPS for the shipping might help save us some money in transportation costs. This looks like yet another barrier to care to me.

I was going to blog my journal that began back in 1991 when the state of Arkansas’ HIV Services Program began.  However, that was a lot of words ago and I have decided to focus on the changes that are happening around us at the moment.

According to the administrator of this program, the Feds have made some changes in the way services are paid  for.  The Feds are looking at what they call “medical case management.”  No one can say for sure just exactly what makes a case manager “medical,”  but apparently I’m not one!  The state (meaning the Arkansas Department of Health) is taking over the billing and payment of several services to date. They will be doing the same for the remaining services in the future.

Right now they are direct paying to contracted services such as physicians and dentists.  In the state of Arkansas there are now 6 contracted physicians and 8 contracted dentists.  Wow!  I hope that everyone lives near one of those contracted folks, otherwise they have quite a hike to access care.

Wait until you hear about the bizarre plan to expend money so it would not have to be turned back to the Feds.