Supervisors ink 28E contract with case management firm

By Brooks Taylor, Mt. Pleasant News

Henry County supervisors inked a 28E agreement with Southeast Iowa Case Management (SICM) but weren?t certain what the agreement would include in the next year.

The board contracts with SICM for management of cases for county residents who need special mental health services. Henry County and SICM have been partners for over a decade.

?I am not sure where things are headed for case management,? observed Marcy Murphy of SICM. ?We have a contractual obligation to serve the contracts we have.?

Murphy and Teresa Roberts, also of SICM, said the landscape is changing rapidly for managed care organizations, largely due to the uncertainty of participating insurance companies in the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid funding.

?The majority of our clients are served by AmeriHealth,? Murphy said. ?The clients who have left did so because their doctors have contracted with a different insurance provider.?

?I don?t know what the state is going to do (concerning Medicaid and insurance companies),? Roberts added.

Murphy said that a number of insurance companies have discontinued providing insurance under the Affordable Care Act ?because they say they aren?t making money, but losing money in Iowa. I don?t think the companies are aware of what services they would have to pay for.

?We have case managers who work for other insurance companies and they feel they are insurance agents,? she added.

Murphy assured the supervisors that SICM would continue to provide the services for which the county contracts. ?We have a plan and we are going to move forward with that.?

Thirteen southeast Iowa counties have 28E agreements with SICM.

Supervisors meet again in regular session Tuesday, May 23, at 9 a.m., in the Henry County Courthouse.