Even after being sued over the issue nine months ago, the Arkansas Department of Human Services is still improperly curtailing home-based care to disabled Medicaid recipients who have appealed the reductions, a legal aid organization contends in a new lawsuit.
Jonesboro-based Legal Aid of Arkansas said in the latest lawsuit, filed Monday, that the department is also failing to provide recipients adequate notice of the reductions despite losing a federal lawsuit on that issue in 2016.
The latest lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Little Rock on behalf of Jacquelyn Dearmore, 71, of Yellville, who suffers from a chronic myeloid leukemia and other ailments.
The hours of help she receives from a home care worker each week were reduced from 33 to 24 as a result of a new type of assessment, performed by a state contractor, that the state began using last year.
According to the lawsuit, the reduction went into effect Dec. 1, even though Dearmore had filed an appeal two weeks earlier, checking a box indicating she wanted her benefits to continue while the case was pending.
"Because of the reduced care hours, Ms. Dearmore's aides do not have enough time to meet all of her care needs in the house," Legal Aid attorney Kevin De Liban said in the lawsuit. "She has been forced to skip about one meal every day, lie in urine-soaked pads or clothing for periods several hours longer than before, take a shower only every other day instead of every day as she needs and wants to, use dirty towels or clothes because all of her laundry cannot get done, live in a dirty house because her incontinence means that she sometimes leaves urine trails around the house, and give up going outside of her house.
"She has suffered increased skin problems from not being cleaned enough, including in her genital area."
As does a lawsuit Legal Aid filed over a similar issue in May, the latest suit seeks damages against Human Services Department Secretary Cindy Gillespie and other department officials in their personal capacities, contending the officials have failed to respond to numerous requests to fix problems with the way the department handles benefit terminations and appeals.
"This is human suffering that nobody should have to go through, especially when you have a clear right to have services continue when you're fighting DHS' decision to cut you," De Liban said in a phone interview.
Spokesmen for the department didn't respond to an email seeking comment on the lawsuit on Tuesday.
The lawsuit is the latest in a series of challenges to reductions of benefits provided under the state's ARChoices program, which provides help with daily living tasks, such as dressing and bathing, to about 8,800 Arkansans.
In 2016, the department began using a computerized tool to calculate the amount of care recipients could receive through the program, resulting in widespread reductions.
In response to a lawsuit by Legal Aid, U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall ruled in October of that year that the notice the department provided to a 90-year-old recipient didn't provide enough information about why her hours were being cut.
That ruling prompted the department to revamp its notices. Now the department is once again failing to provide notices that explain the cuts resulting from the new assessment system, the new lawsuit contends.
Like the still-pending lawsuit filed in May, the latest suit contends the Human Services Department is violating federal regulations prohibiting state agencies from terminating or reducing benefits, pending the outcome of an evidentiary hearing, to recipients who appeal the agency's decision within 10 days.
After the May lawsuit was filed, the Human Services Department cut or reduced benefits to at least six more Medicaid recipients, in addition to Dearmore, even though the recipients had filed appeals within the 10-day deadline, De Liban said in the latest suit.
Those recipients had their benefits restored only after a Legal Aid attorney contacted the department, he said in the suit.
Both the May lawsuit and the one filed Monday included as exhibits dozens of emails from Legal Aid to the Human Services Department complaining about similar reductions and terminations and pleading with the department to establish a procedure to prevent similar occurrences.
From March 2017 to April 2018, a department employee was assigned to review all appeals to determine whether they were filed on time for the purpose of continuing recipients' benefits while the appeals were pending, according to the latest lawsuit.
Department officials learned in 2017 that that employee "was receiving more appeals from [the department's Office of Appeals and Hearings] than he could reasonably manage and that beneficiaries' benefits were not always being continued despite timely appeal," the lawsuit says.
That employee has since left the department, De Liban said. From April 2018 to Dec. 1, 2019, the department did not have any employee assigned to take over the task, according to the suit.
Metro on 02/26/2020