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Arkansas steering committee votes to extend CARES Act bonuses to hospital clinical and support staff
Summary
A state steering committee overseeing CARES Act funds voted unanimously to extend COVID-19 bonuses beyond long-term‑care clinical staff to include hospital clinical staff and nonclinical support workers such as housekeepers, officials said.
Lieutenant Governor Tim Griffin hosted a live webcast with state Surgeon General Dr. Bledsoe, who announced that Arkansas’s CARES Act steering committee has voted to extend COVID‑19 bonus pay to hospital clinical staff and nonclinical support workers.
Dr. Bledsoe, the state surgeon general and an emergency‑room physician, said the Arkansas Department of Human Services had earlier secured a Medicaid waiver enabling bonuses for clinical staff in long‑term care facilities. He said the state’s allocation under the CARES Act totals about $1,250,000,000 and a governor‑appointed steering committee is determining how to distribute those funds.
“Our steering committee voted unanimously to provide that same bonus to the clinical staff in the hospitals and also the non clinical staff like housekeepers within hospitals and the long term care facilities,” Dr. Bledsoe said. He added that the committee intends to push funding quickly to employees without being “hung up in the bureaucracy of the hospital.”
Dr. Bledsoe said housekeepers, janitorial staff and cafeteria workers who support clinical care should qualify for the direct bonus payments. He described the Medicaid waiver as covering clinical staff in long‑term care facilities and said CARES Act funds will be used to expand payments to hospital staff through an employer‑mediated payroll process.
The steering committee makeup, Dr. Bledsoe said, includes elected officials and members of Governor Hutchinson’s cabinet; he identified Elizabeth Smith, the Medicaid inspector general, as the committee’s chair and said he was vice chair. Decisions, he said, will be made in public meetings and distributed based on documented needs.
Dr. Bledsoe acknowledged outstanding questions, including whether paramedics and EMTs will be included. “There’s no more deserving group of people than our paramedics and EMTs,” he said, and said committee members would consider adding them in the coming weeks but had not allocated funds to them yet.
What happens next: the steering committee will finalize allocation rules and publish them; Dr. Bledsoe said the state expects direct employer‑mediated bonus payments to reach eligible employees soon. The committee’s vote was announced on the webcast but the transcript records no line‑by‑line tally beyond the description of a unanimous vote.
