Setting Up Guardians for Maximum Hours

This article will explain all the necessary requirements for ensuring you have setup the attributes for a provider-guardian to conform to the Arizona law HB2945 and AHCCCS requirements of maintaining the 40 hour per week maximum for Parent Provider Care Givers. PPCG

First the requirement:

HB2945 indicates that PPCG individuals that provide services to their own children under 18 year old can not work more than 40 hours per week. This limitation is for the combined PPCG that have guardianship over that child as a "combined" total. The workweek spokechoice uses for this is your given Department of Labor work week for determining whether overtime is required.

Note: you can determine your work week in SpokeChoice by going to back-office settings and looking at the time card tab. You may not change this and if you want to change it you must consider that the department of labor does not look kindly on companies that change this. You will need to send a ticket to us to change your work week and acknowledge you understand the ramifications for doing so.

In addition to the combined maximum of 40 hours all guardians with all minor children assigned to them can not work more than a combined 80 hours per work week. AHCCCS also states that PPCG individuals can not work between the hours of 10pm and 6am. At this moment AHCCCS has stated that they are not going to enforce this item until October 1st 2025.

PPCG individuals can also not work as paid providers for more than one agency. Spokechoice CAN NOT monitor or provide this service and as such it is up to the agency to ensure this requirement.

Settings in Spokechoice

In order for the system to ensure PPCG's you have working for you conform to the above requirements you MUST set the following in the system.

  • Guardian has true Legal guardianShip.

Under the guardian-client assignment tab you will see a check box indicating GuardianShip.

If this guardian has true legal guardianship with this member you must indicate that as such. Failure to indicate this will result in that PPCG working more than 40 hours in a given work week and your agency not reimbursed and not being in compliance.

  • Ensure that ALL providers that are PPCG are entered as a a guardian and "Has Guardianship" is checked.

If there are multiple PPCG's taking care of a member and you have them only as a Provider the totals will not be added up. This is because the provider needs to be indicated as a legal Guardian. For example. Lets say you have Mary and Bob who are both Providers taking care of their child Lauren. If Mary is a guardian to Lauren with guardianship but Bob is only listed as a provider but has guardianship then only Mary's time will be calculated. You MUST ENSURE that Bob is listed as a guardian to Lauren and HAS guardianship. Otherwise SpokeChoice will not use both of those "providers" to combine time.

Same is true with a family that has more than one member that is receiving services. Bob and Mary must both be assigned as guardians with guardianship to both children. If you assign only Bob to Lauren and Mary to Justin then they can cheat the system and both work more than 40 hours or more than 80 with both combined.

Do this:

Mary & Bob = Lauren (Both have guardianship over Lauren)

Mary & Bob = Justin. (Both have guardianship over Justin)

Do not do this:

Mary = Lauren (Mary only has guardianship over Lauren but still might be a provider for Justin)

Bob = Justin. (Bob only has guardianship over Justin but still might be a provider for Lauren)

What happens if you do not do this?

Failure to assign guardianship will result in zero totals added up for a guardian and/or provider to work more than 40 hours and could mean you are on the hook to pay payroll but not be reimbursed.