hundreds join florida’s new disability care program | Health

More than 300 people with intellectual and developmental disabilities who have been lingering on a Medicaid wait list for years have signed up for a new program designed to provide them with the health care and services they require to live in homes and communities and not in institutions.

Independent Living Systems Vice President for Government Affairs Carol Gormley told the Florida Phoenix that 323 people had enrolled in the organization’s Medicaid managed-care plan, Florida Community Care, since Oct. 1. That’s when the expansion of the Medicaid program from a pilot for people with intellectual and developmentally disabilities in seven counties and became available in all 67 counties.

The 323 new members live in 44 counties, Gormley told the Florida Phoenix.

The Agency for Health Care Administration “has been working to distribute information and facilitate the enrollment process,” Gormley said in a written statement when asked about the enrollment growth.

The agency staged three regional town hall meetings about the new Medicaid managed care programs for self-advocates, parents, and providers. Arc Broward and The Arc Tampa Bay hosted two of the meetings, with the latter drawing more than 100 people, Summer Pfeiffer, CEO of the Arc of Florida, told the Florida Phoenix. Arc is a nonprofit that serves people with these disabilities.

AHCA staff and Gormley attended all three meetings and Agency for Persons with Disabilities (ADP) Director Bob Asztalos spoke at one of the meetings.

“I kept thinking to myself, these are two-hour meetings, do we really need two hours? But the questions that were generated from families that were in attendance and providers that were there …. I mean, it was a lot of questions. I think everybody felt heard,” Pfeiffer said, recalling the Tampa Bay-area meeting.

Turns out the two hours wasn’t enough, at least for the Tampa Bay meeting, Pfeiffer continued, recalling that people lingered afterward to get the answers to additional questions.

“There were quite a few parents that, you know, you could tell they needed more,” Pfeiffer said.

The new statewide Medicaid managed care program for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities was championed by House Speaker Daniel Perez.

The program was first approved in 2023 as a pilot program designed to care for up to 600 individuals on the Medicaid iBudget wait list. That program provides clients with money for services to help with activities of daily living such as grooming, eating, and bathing. Those services allow clients to live in their communities and outside of institutions. APD serves 35,790 individuals through iBudget Florida.

But the Legislature hasn’t provided the funds needed to enroll everyone who qualifies for iBudget and there’s a lengthy wait list for services — exceeding 21,000 people when the Legislature passed HB 1103 this spring. Despite a slow start-up for the pilot (there were just 358 enrollees in May), HB 1103 grew the program from its original footprint in Hillsborough, Polk, Manatee, Hardee, Highlands, Miami-Dade, and Monroe counties and expanded it statewide.

Now there are 700 enrollees in Florida Community Care, with 323 new members enrolling since Oct. 1.

Citing AHCA estimates, Gormley says there’s enough funding to enroll 2,000 people who are on the Medicaid iBudget wait list into the new managed care program.

This report first appeared on the website of the Florida Phoenix, a nonprofit news organization dedicated to coverage of state government and politics from Tallahassee.