Arkansas Medicaid Look-Back Period

Arkansas's look-back period covers the 60 months — five years — immediately preceding the point of application for nursing-facility or waiver Medicaid, applying to transfers made on or after February 8, 2006. The rule targets transfers for less than fair market value that could otherwise affect vendor-payment or waiver eligibility.

The review isn't limited to the applicant alone — DHS policy extends it to transfers made by an eligible spouse or a representative acting on the applicant's behalf, too. There's also a built-in presumption worth knowing about: any less-than-fair-market-value transfer that happened within the look-back window is presumed to have been made to help establish Medicaid eligibility, unless the applicable policy analysis shows something different. There's a published hardship-waiver route available for cases where the resulting penalty would create genuine hardship.