Iowa Dept. of Health and Human Services redesigning program supporting people with disabilities

WATERLOO, Iowa (KCRG) – The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services is redesigning the Medicaid program that allows people with disabilities to get care in their homes or communities rather than in an institutional setting.

As part of that process, state officials are going across Iowa holding a series of listening sessions and asking people for their feedback.

Elizabeth Matney, Director of Iowa Medicaid, will tell you herself the Home- and Community-Based Services Waiver Program just isn’t working.

“It’s not serving everyone in the way that we would want it to,” said Matney.

The services people get might include everything from adult day care to home-delivered meals. The first step is getting approved for a state waiver, but that process can be slow.

“The wait lists are too long,” said Matney. She said there are currently 14,000 names on waitlists and not enough people to provide services for them.

“We started to see glimpses of this prior to the pandemic—we were seeing workforce shortages,” said Matney.

Iowa Health and Human Services is hoping the feedback from these sessions will help them fix these problems.

The department is looking to reduce the number of hoops people have to jump through, shrink the number of waiver categories, and make services equitable across all those categories.

Matney emphasized she wanted Iowans to let officials know if they were on the right track.

“I’m not trying to skirt the responsibility. But we can’t do this by ourselves and we shouldn’t do this by ourselves,” said Matney.

The next listening sessions in Eastern Iowa are listed below:

• Marshalltown, Tuesday 11/7, 10:30 AM-noon Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum 20 West State Street, Marshalltown, IA 50158
• Cedar Rapids, Thursday 11/9, 11:30AM-1 PM Cedar Rapids Public Library, Whipple Auditorium 450 Fifth Ave. SE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52401
• Dubuque, Thursday 11/9, 3:30-5 PM Carnegie-Stout Public Library 360 W 11th St, Dubuque, IA 52001

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