Grace Loehr, Anne's mother, lives in constant fear that her daughter will wind up hurt, neglected or improperly medicated. She has spent years trying to find a bed in a safe, well-run group home. Loehr was recently asked to leave the rest home she shared with the three men, and moved in with Grace. She recently found a bed in another rest home near Raleigh. It's very unhealthy.
Officials say it's nowhere near enough.
That money will never come, he says, until legislators begin to trust the agency again. We are very much aware of the fact that our system is being questioned in the very way we do business. The N.C. Division of Medical Assistance studied financial reports, and discovered area mental health offices were billing Medicaid for services and failing to contribute the required state match. For every Medicaid dollar spent in the local mental health programs, about 63cents comes from the federal government, and the balance is the state's responsibility. In North Carolina, some mental health officials routinely inflated the costs of services, so that the 63percent federal share paid the whole bill and the state contributed nothing.