Arkansas DHS will ask lawmakers for higher pay for state nurses

Arkansas Department of Human Services officials will ask lawmakers in June to approve a new designation for nurses that care for people with profound intellectual disabilities.

The “direct care” nurse designation would ideally alleviate some of the staffing struggles at the state’s five Human Development Centers, Melissa Weatherton, DHS Director of Specialty Medicaid Services, told the Joint Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee on Tuesday. 

Three mothers whose adult sons live in Human Development Centers, 24-hour residential care facilities for Arkansans with intellectual disabilities who cannot live independently, told the committee that their children have thrived under the care of the centers’ medical staff.

“I don’t think of John as an institutionalized person,” said Carole Sherman, referring to her 55-year-old son who lives in the Arkadelphia HDC and whose disabilities result from genetic anomalies. “He lives where his health and safety needs are best met.”

Sherman spoke to the committee alongside Kimberly Dodd, whose son Matthew also lives in the Arkadelphia center, and Katrina Robertson, whose son Noah lives in the Booneville center. The other three HDCs are in Conway, Jonesboro and Warren.

The Arkadelphia and Booneville centers have been hiring travel nurses in order to fulfill their staffing requirements because the facilities do not offer competitive wages compared to other nursing positions, Sherman said. This causes morale issues among staff because travel nurses are paid more to do the same work as the staff nurses, she said.

DHS will present the Arkansas Legislative Council in June with a proposal to raise the salaries of both registered nurses and licensed practical nurses throughout the state, Weatherton said. She added that a wide range of state entities have been hiring travel nurses to meet their needs, including the departments of Health and Veterans Affairs.

The agencies have been working together “for several months… to come up with a proposal that we felt like we could all absorb within our budgets so that we could make a real difference,” Weatherton said.

Public Health Committee members expressed support for the upcoming proposal, including Republican Rep. Jack Ladyman, whose adult son lives in the Jonesboro HDC.

“The amount of medical care, the issues that these direct care nurses have to deal with is much more difficult than some of the other nursing jobs that we have,” Ladyman said. “It’s a matter of paying for the difficulty of the job, and I think most people can agree with that.”

Committee co-chair Rep. Lee Johnson, R-Greenwood, said he also has an adult child with disabilities and supports increasing HDC nurses’ wages.

“This is 841 individuals [living in HDCs],” he said. “This is not going to break the bank of Arkansas.”