HJAR Jul/Aug 2025

56 JUL / AUG 2025  I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS   Healthcare Briefs Arkansas Health Care Association Launches Nursing School Arkansas Health Care Association (AHCA) announces the launch of its AHCA School of Nursing. Through the program, Certified Nurs- ing Assistants (CNAs) within member facilities can take courses to advance to a MA-C role. Then, MA-Cs can apply to the AHCA School of Nurs- ing to become an LPN. Roughly 93% of Medication Assistant-Certified staffers (MA-Cs) express interest in advancing their nursing careers, but only 5.8% do so. Scheduling conflicts and financial constraints are major factors in this statistic. The AHCA School of Nursing directly addresses these hurdles by offering flexible scheduling and affordable tuition subsidized through public and private funding. Before being admitted into the AHCA School of Nursing, LPN students passed pre-requisite courses provided through Ozarka College. The initial phase of the AHCA School of Nursing will have locations in Little Rock, Rogers, and Jones- boro. There will be 71 students in the first year with classes beginning in June. UAMS Hires Sarah Jane Rhoads, PhD, DNP, as Dean of the College of Nursing The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) has announced that Sarah Jane Rhoads, PhD, DNP, a former faculty member, is returning to UAMS as the next dean of the College of Nurs- ing, effective Sept. 1. She replaces Patricia Cowan, PhD, RN, who is retiring after a nearly 40-year career in nurs- ing, including a decade of leading the College of Nursing. Rhoads joins UAMS from the University of Ten- nessee Health Science Center in Memphis, where she is professor and chair of the Department of Community and Population Health in the College of Nursing. She also held joint faculty appoint- ments in the UT colleges of Medicine and Gradu- ate Health Sciences since arriving in 2018. Rhoads was a UAMS faculty member for nearly 20 years after being first appointed as an assis- tant clinical instructor in the College of Nursing in 1999. By 2018, she was a tenured associate professor in the College of Medicine’s Depart- ment of Obstetrics & Gynecology with a joint appointment in the College of Nursing as an associate professor. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, Master of Nursing Science, and PhD in Nursing at UAMS. She received a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree from the UT Health Science Center’s Col- lege of Nursing. She is certified as a nurse practi- tioner in women’s health and inpatient obstetrics. Kristi PutnamSteps Down as Arkansas Human Services Secretary By Sonny Albarado, June 11, 2025, Arkansas Advocate, arkansasadvocate.com Arkansas State Medicaid Director Janet Mann will become secretary of the Department of Human Services next month as Secretary Kristi Putnam returns to Kentucky, the governor’s office announced Wednesday. Mann serves as DHS’ deputy secretary of pro- grams as well as Medicaid director. She has over 20 years of experience in healthcare and health- care finance and previously served as chief finan- cial officer and director of the division of medical services for the department. Putnam was deputy secretary of the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services when Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders picked her to lead Arkansas’ Human Services Department in 2023. As DHS deputy secretary of programs, Mann oversees the department’s divisions of aging, substance abuse and mental health, develop- mental disabilities, provider services and quality assurance, eligibility, child welfare and youth ser- vices, as well as Medicaid. The department is the state’s largest agency with a total budget of about $11 billion, and its programs serve approximately 1 in 3 Arkansans. Mann’s background includes a stint as the dep- uty administrator for Mississippi Medicaid and as a consultant to several states’ Medicaid agencies on finance, reporting, managed care, program integrity, organizational assessments and eligi- bility, according to the press release. She holds a bachelor of science degree in accounting from the University of Alabama and is a Certified Pub- lic Accountant. Good News for the Health Insurance Companies: Dr. Oz and RFKAre Letting You Regulate Yourselves —Again By Dianne Marie Normand Hartley In a recent press conference billed as “Secretary Kennedy, Administrator Oz to Host Press Confer- ence to Discuss Groundbreaking Health Insur- ance Reform,” the topic was prior authorizations. We won’t go into the weeds — you’ve heard it all before. In 2018. In 2023. And now again in 2025. We weren’t in the room, but I imagine insur- ance executives were thrilled. Something along the lines of: “Thanks for not regulating us — of course we’ll begin to monitor ourselves. They’re starting to pop us out there.” Because when Stat News asked the final ques- tion of a press conference notably light on specif- ics — “Dr. Oz, insurers made a similar pledge in 2018 that wasn’t quite lived up to. What’s different this time around?”— Dr. Oz responded, “Secre- tary Kennedy alluded to that. There was another effort in 2023. I think two things have changed. Uh, I mean there’s violence in the streets over these issues. This is not something that is a pas- sively accepted reality anymore. Americans are upset about it... “Secretary Kennedy made it very clear from the outset that we’re going to deal with this issue one way or the other. We have legislation pend- ing that would codify some of these changes. But I think the major factor is the industry real- izes that some of the things that are pre-autho- rized just don’t make any sense. And they now believe that because we could actually create an interoperable digital system, a connectivity with very agreed-on standards — this actually could become a real-time process, which takes a lot of Sarah Jane Rhoads, PhD, DNP