Colorado Reverses Medicaid Payment Cut for Private Duty Nurses, Decides to End Funding for Long-Term Therapies

Officials from the Colorado Medical Services Board last week approved a plan to rescind a 5% cut in Medicaid payments to private duty nurses who care for people with disabilities, the Denver Rocky Mountain News reports. The board, which oversees the state Health Care Policy and Financing Agency and its $1.9 billion Medicaid budget, agreed to reverse the nursing reimbursement cut, which had been approved in June to balance the program's budget. Instead, the board decided to eliminate funding for long-term physical, occupational, speech and language therapies provided at home for people with disabilities. According to the Rocky Mountain News, disabled residents had been concerned that cuts to the nurses' payments would prompt home care agencies to end their participation in Medicaid, leaving disabled people without services that allow them to be independent. "What's more important to our clients is getting the attendant services -- bathing, feeding, getting out of bed, getting dressed. There's no point in getting occupational therapy if you can't get out of bed," Tim Thornton, co-director of the Atlantis Community Agency, a home health agency for people who are disabled. But "[n]ot everyone was happy" with the compromise, the Rocky Mountain News reports. "A lot of people have a tremendous potential to get better, but won't if therapy is cut," Scott Quick, father of a disabled 25-year old, said (Scanlon, Denver Rocky Mountain News, 8/10).