Foster care children enrolled in Medicaid are frequently not getting proper healthcare thanks, in part, to ineffective oversight by the federal and state governments.
State governments and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families require regular care for foster children, but many of those enrolled in Medicaid in California, Illinois, New York and Texas have been missing required health screenings, according to the HHS inspector general.
State government officials are required to ensure that “children in foster care receive periodic screenings at specified intervals throughout their foster care placement,” the report said, but too often the standard is not met.
“Nearly a third of children in foster care who were enrolled in Medicaid did not receive at least one required health screening” and “just over a quarter of children in foster care who were enrolled in Medicaid received at least one required screening late,” the inspector general said.
The Children’s Bureau is responsible for insuring that state officials maintain an approved schedule for initial and routine check-ups of children in foster care. There are more than 400,000 foster care children in the U.S.
The inspector general examined a random sample of 393 foster care children who were enrolled in Medicaid between July 1, 2011, and June 30, 2012, including about 100 each from California, Illinois, New York and Texas. Those four states account for 31 percent of all foster care children nationwide.
“Children in foster care often experience chronic medical, developmental, and mental health issues. States’ ability to ensure that foster children receive needed health services is critical to these children’s well-being,” the inspector general said.
Health screenings for foster care children assess their medical, dental, hearing vision, mental health and other health-related developments. A child’s healthcare experience in foster care is “often affected by lack of access to and coordination of care,” the report said.
Children’s Bureau officials said they would “consider implementing” the inspector general’s recommendation that it “expand its child and family services reviews to ensure that children in foster care receive screenings according to the timeframes specified in States’ plans.”
The March 2015 inspector general report isn’t the first time the watchdog has reported that numerous foster children who were enrolled in Medicaid received healthcare that wasn’t up to par.
A series of OIG reports from 2003 through 2005 examined the effectiveness of Medicaid for children in foster care across eight states and discovered a “variety of issues, including that foster care providers and caregivers were not receiving medical histories for children in their care and that not all children in foster care were receiving appropriate health care services,” the 2015 report said.
A May 2010 inspector general review of 345 foster care children estimated that 75 percent of those enrolled in Medicaid in nine states “did not receive all required medical, vision and hearing screenings” and “nearly 60 percent of children who received … medical screenings lacked at least one component of a complete medical screening.”
