Arkansas health officials track Katrina evacuees

REDFIELD - U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt arrived Friday to visit Hurricane Katrina victims in Arkansas and promised that refugees would have easy access to Medicaid and other benefits.

"I hope so, because we went through, pardon my expression, hell," said Randy Starks, 17, of New Orleans, a refugee housed at the United Pentecostal Church camp outside this town southeast of Little Rock.

Starks said a half-inch thick piece of glass pierced his ankle as he tried to get ice from a store that had been damaged in the storm. He was treated for his injury after arriving in Arkansas and, under a federal program announced by Leavitt, would be covered by Medicaid.

Meanwhile, state health officials fretted about whether they would be reimbursed for providing such services, and Leavitt sought to allay those concerns.

"The president established a new status called 'evacuee' that will allow easy distribution of federal benefits by the states," Leavitt said.

He said those benefits would include Medicaid, food stamps, public housing and unemployment compensation, and states will be reimbursed by the federal government.

"The president doesn't want compassion to be a financial burden to the state," Leavitt said. "No one who has been a victim of this disaster should be prevented from getting benefits they need because of government red tape," Leavitt said.

Arkansas' DHHS director, John Selig, said the state and its medical providers weren't waiting to give treatment.

"We're pushing for the federal government to pick up 100 percent of Medicaid costs for these evacuees, because we're not in a position to pick them up," Selig said.

Medicaid is the elderly and low-income health benefit administered by the state and is normally reimbursed at a 67 percent rate by the federal government.

Leavitt said reimbursement for benefits provided to hurricane refugees would amount to the state being "made as whole as we can reasonably make it."

Selig said he thought that meant that federal officials weren't yet ready to put a number to the matter, "but I'm still confident that the federal government will help us significantly."

While beset by some of the same challenges that have bogged down Katrina relief efforts in Louisiana and Mississippi, Arkansas health officials were confident Friday that they have a clear picture of the whereabouts and needs of evacuees in the state.

The new state Department of Health and Human Services has established an emergency operations center on the ninth floor of a Little Rock office building, with 20 health specialists taking calls and pounding away on laptops, the latest news coverage projected on a wall and a karaoke microphone to give strategic updates.

"Always in any emergency operations center, there's a lack of situational awareness because you can't see the event," said Dr. Paul Halverson, director of the state DHHS Health Division.

But using a large map and ever-changing databases, health officials have dispatched 5,000 state workers and volunteers to provide acute medical care and preventive inoculations to the 9,000 refugees who entered the state through Fort Chaffee.

There were only 37 evacuees left there as of Thursday night, Halverson said.

Gov. Mike Huckabee said that, at the peak of the temporary influx of refugees, Arkansas had about 75,000, but the number has declined now to about 50,000.

Jim Harris, a spokesman for the governor's office, said nearly 5,000 refugees remained in 26 Arkansas church camps on Friday plus an unknown number in shelters, private homes, apartments and possibly hotels or motels.

By late Saturday, there were 218 evacuees at the Conway Sports Center.

"We are seeing a number of (camps) where the volunteers are helping the people there find jobs and find homes outside of the camps," Harris said.

Additionally, some areas in Louisiana outside of New Orleans were letting people return. Evacuees from those areas were heading home, and others were going to the homes of relatives or friends.

Starks, a 6-foot-7 high school senior who plays basketball, wore a White Hall basketball practice shirt. He said he had enrolled in White Hall High School, and plans to stay in Arkansas indefinitely.

"They offer you a lot of help," Starks said.