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State announces clawback amounts from county mental health services

Hawk Eye, The (Burlington, IA) - 10/22/2014

Oct. 22--Des Moines County'sMental Health and Disabilities Services Department will have to pay the state about $62,000 by the new year.

The figure represents 80 percent of the savings the county experienced during the last fiscal year, ending June 30, because the state took over Medicaid services the county once delivered. The state is allowing counties to use 20 percent of the savings for new programs, such as crisis intervention.

The state passed legislation in 2012 that redesigned how such services are delivered. The state promised to equalize services to $47.28 per capita per county.

If a county's MHDS tax levy totaled less than $47.28 per capita, it received an "equalization payment" in August this year and August 2013.

Des Moines County received $156,245 in August and about $150,000 in August 2013.

This year, the money did not go to the county but to the new regional MHDS organization, Southeast Iowa Link, or SEIL.

Regionalization of services and therefore records and accounting also were a requirement of the redesign legislation. SEIL is an eight-county-member organization that formed July 1, as required by the new law.

The nearly $62,000 will be "clawed back" from the August equalization payment, held in SEIL coffers.

The state warned the counties it would ask for a clawback nearly a year ago, but the counties protested the state's proposed method of calculating savings was unfair and too general.

The state went through an administrative code adoption procedure with county input to standardize how counties measure MHDS savings.

Standard software codes for MHDS are being used to measure what the county used to pay for, but now does not, using 2012 as the base year.

Counties with tax levies of more than $47.28 per capita did not receive equalization payments and had to reduce their levies to that amount March 15, 2013, and March 15, 2014, and will have to certify the levy at that same rate March 15, 2015.

The redesign legislation only goes to fiscal year starting July 1, 2016, according to Theresa Armstrong, Iowa Department of Human Services bureau chief of Mental Health and Disabilities Services.

Therefore equalization payments, clawbacks and MHDS tax levy rates again will be addressed by the Legislature, Armstrong said.

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(c)2014 The Hawk Eye (Burlington, Iowa)

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