Courtesy of Kentucky Lantern
A bill meant to give peer support specialists a two-year reprieve from new credentialing requirements that threaten to put many of them out of work cleared its first hurdle Thursday.
The House Health Services Committee approved House Bill 470 sponsored by the committee’s chair, Rep. Kim Moser, R-Taylor Mill.
The bill would help ease a “peer support workforce shortage” caused by the new training and licensing requirements that took effect Jan. 1, Alaina Sweasy, a lobbyist and consultant whose company provides peer support training, told the committee. Sweasy worked with Moser on drafting the bill.
Moser also sponsored House Bill 505, the 2024 legislation that revamped the licensing of peer support specialists who work in alcohol and drug treatment and recovery. An unintended consequence of that law was to cut off Medicaid funding to reimburse peer support work in state-regulated addiction treatment settings.
Moser’s bill would move the deadline for obtaining the new credential to Jan. 1, 2028. She said it also would allow Medicaid to again reimburse employers of peer support specialists who were certified prior to the 2024 law. The bill has an emergency clause so it would take effect as soon as it becomes law.
Peer support duties range from providing transportation to medical appointments and court dates to teaching problem-solving skills to individuals and groups. Peer support specialists share their first-hand experiences of addiction and hope with clients who are new to treatment and recovery. They are typically paid $15-$18 an hour in Kentucky.
Moser said the Kentucky Board of Alcohol and Drug Counselors and the Cabinet for Health and Family Services did not promulgate regulations implementing the new law in time to avoid the current backlog of applicants.
As of Thursday, 101 people had qualified for the new credential, compared with 16,883 who were certified under the previous standards. Another 870 peer support specialists have obtained a temporary credential, but Kentucky Medicaid has said it is not allowed to reimburse for work done by people who have temporary credentials.
Frank Miller, an attorney representing a Lexington nonprofit that is challenging the 2024 law in court, testified that this year’s HB 470 suffers from the same vagueness and imprecision as its predecessor. He predicted it would work no better and could not withstand legal challenges. “It has simply told the cabinet to go write some regulations.”
Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
