The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration is asking for $558,000 for the next fiscal year to establish a system to collect data on the citizenship status of hospital patients. The Legislature would have to approve the money as part of the state budget.
Since the state’s new immigration law went into effect on July 1, hospitals that accept Medicaid must ask patients whether they are citizens of the United States. The law states that AHCA has to collect that data every quarter and submit a report to the governor, House speaker and Senate leader by March 1.
Even though hospitals must also tell patients that their response will not affect the type of care they receive and that their status will not be reported to immigration authorities, advocacy groups say the change has made immigrants in the state afraid to go to hospitals.
In fact, the groups have launched a “Decline to Answer” campaign to encourage people to not answer questions regarding their immigration status.
AHCA does not have any funds set aside to establish the system to collect data, according to Kimberly Smoak, the agency’s deputy secretary for health care policy and oversight, during a House Health Care Appropriations subcommittee meeting on Wednesday.
“The agency was given no funding to build or to maintain a system to collect this data. So without a system to collect this data, we will have staff copying and pasting data from individual emails over a thousand per year,” Smoak said.
The agency must collect data on the number of patients who said they were citizens, lawful residents, undocumented residents and those who did not answer.
The half a million the agency is asking for would also go toward the collection of financial data from nursing homes. There are four staff members who collect and review financial data from hospitals and nursing homes within the state, and AHCA wants to hire four more, Smoak said during the subcommittee meeting.
South Florida Democrat Marie Paule Woodson asked what steps AHCA is taking to make sure the collection of data about citizenship status is consistent with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, meaning that it would not discriminate on the grounds of race, color or national origin.
“I cannot stand here today and go point by point of what we’ve done, but I do know that is part of our everyday routine when we collect any sort of data,” Smoak said.
This article originally appeared in florida phoenix