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for Mental Health Services)
The New Jersey Department of Human Services provides
access to mainstream medical care to children and adults. Services
are tailored to the needs of families in a variety of situations,
whether it be an elderly Medicaid recipient, a low-income worker
in a job without health benefits, an individual with a developmental
disability, or a family whose child experiences a catastrophic illness.
The Department strives to ensure that all of New
Jersey’s residents have access to affordable, quality health care,
through Medicaid or one of the programs
described below, or by funding community health programs and hospitals.
DHS works in cooperation with Health
Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) and locally-based health
care organizations throughout the state to help provide this care.
The Department’s primary resource of health care information and
access to services is through the Division
of Medical Assistance and Health Services (DMAHS).
Health care services include the following:
The Catastrophic
Illness in Children Relief Fund provides eligible
families with financial assistance to help them cover medical expenses
that were previously incurred because their child became catastrophically
ill or injured. Covered expenses include, but are not limited to,
special ambulatory care, acute or specialized in- or out-patient
hospital care, medical equipment, medically-related home modifications,
home health care and medical transportation.
Health Care for People with
Disabilities : Under managed
care, beneficiaries enroll in one of five Health Maintenance
Organizations (HMOs), which
manages their health care and offers special services in addition
to the wide array of benefits to which beneficiaries are entitled.
For people with disabilities, the move to managed care began in
October, 2000, under a program, entitled, New Jersey Care 2000+,
when it became mandatory for approximately 90,000 New Jersey Medicaid
beneficiaries who are aged, blind and disabled to enroll.
The Department helps these Medicaid beneficiaries
enroll in the HMOs. Under contract with DHS, these HMOs provide
a larger menu of services that are better coordinated, and more
customized to consumers’ special needs, than those normally found
in the fee-for-service system.
Many services needed by people with developmental
or other disabilities, from surgery to dental care and preventive
services, are more available and accessible. The managed care package
for the developmentally disabled population also covers mental health
and substance abuse services.
Medicaid is
an entitlement program that provides health insurance for more than
600,000 very low-income parents, children and people who are aged,
blind or disabled. It pays for hospital, doctor, prescription drug,
nursing home and many other health care benefits.
Health Insurance for Families and Children
is provided through the NJ
FamilyCare program, which helps financially eligible families
obtain health insurance to cover the cost of routine physician visits,
prescriptions, hospitalizations, lab tests, x-rays, eyeglasses for
themselves and for their children and dental care for most children
and for some adults .
The
Office for Prevention of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities
is a public educational resource to help educate New Jerseyans about
those factors that can cause mental retardation or other developmental
disabilities, with a strong focus on prevention. Educational efforts
include, but are not limited to, information for pregnant women
about substance abuse and its effects on the unborn fetus, dangers
of ingesting lead paint, and other environmental causes of disabilities.
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