Laconia district hires medical professional to oversee Medicaid claims

LACONIA — Children with learning disabilities often need more than individualized teaching. To achieve their maximum potential they also need various therapeutic and services in order to attain academic success. Today schools in Laconia and elsewhere are the primary point of entry to youngsters receiving health and social services.

These services include physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and counseling for students with behavioral problems.

The Laconia School Board this week authorized spending $10,000 to pay a medical professional to oversee the submission of claims that are eligible for reimbursement by Medicaid. The money will pay for a nurse practitioner to review and approve claims on a weekly basis before those claims are submitted to Medicaid.

Superintendent Steve Tucker told the board that the $10,000 cost for the services of the licensed medical professional will more than pay for itself given that the amount of reimbursement the district expects to receive is about $500,000 annually.

In order to qualify for Medicaid reimbursement, the special services need to be ordered by the special education team in the student’s school and be in line with the student’s individualized special education plan, according to Assistant Superintendent Amy Hinds.

The services can involve a physical therapist working with a student who may have a partial loss of the use of a limb, or an occupational therapist who helps a student to improve their handwriting by using a pencil grip, a psychologist who works with a student with behavioral problems, or a specialist who assesses a student’s hearing or visual impairment.

Hinds said about 350 Laconia students receive some kind of service that can be covered by Medicaid.

That amounts to 29 percent of the students in the city’s public schools. By comparison, between 15 percent and 17 percent of students are classified as special education pupils.

Hinds said a high percentage of the city special education students receive some form of Medicaid-reimbursed services. Those students tend to be concentrated in the lower grades, she noted, because most often students are identified as needing those services when they first enter school.

Medicaid, created in 1965 to provide health insurance to the poor, now is an important source of assistance to school districts across the country. The public insurance program has evolved so that it now finances myriad education-related services, including transportation for youngsters with disabilities, school clinics and counseling for children from turbulent backgrounds.

Nationally, Medicaid spends $4 billion of its $400 billion annual budget in schools, according to Keyser Health News.