The Board of Examiners on Tuesday approved 160 contracts, many of them needed to implement decisions made by the 2021 Legislature.
The largest in terms of money were on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services — 45 contracts totaling $1.14 billion.
A majority of that money is federal dollars, much of it tied to the Medicaid program.
The contracts include infusions of funding to support hospitals in Nevada that serve a disproportionate share of the indigent, uninsured and Medicaid recipients in the state. The primary beneficiary of that is University Medical Center in Las Vegas, with Renown in Reno a distant second.
The largest single contract is through the state department of Health and Human Services to provide for costs of the home and community-based services waivers for the frail elderly, persons with physical, intellectual or developmental disabilities to prevent them from being hospitalized or placed in nursing facilities. That contract is funded with more than $511 million in federal money.
Other contracts fund child support enforcement efforts throughout the state. The upper payment limit program that lets Nevada Medicaid make up the difference between what Medicaid pays for services and what Medicare would have paid.
The list of contracts approved Tuesday includes 11 for the Department of Education totaling $27.5 million.
That list includes contracts to assess how well programs including Read by Grade 3 are doing and to evaluate early childhood classroom programs along with assessing programs that provide career and technology programs, advanced placement and work-based learning for rural high schools.
Another $40.5 million is in the Department of Agriculture’s Commodity Foods program that uses USDA commodities as ingredients to provide free or reduced breakfasts and lunches in Nevada’s schools.
There are also a number of software and hardware contracts supporting a number of different agencies.
The board consisting of the governor, attorney general and secretary of state is required to approve all state contracts in excess of $50,000.
