Updated September 17, 2026. Quick answer: In Arkansas, a Medicaid nursing-facility resident’s Personal Needs Allowance is $40.00/Month, the amount of their own income they keep for personal use each month, with the rest going to the facility as the patient-pay amount toward the cost of care. That is well above the $30/month federal floor set in 1988 and never raised since. Arkansas DHS Division of County Operations, Medical Services Policy Manual, Section H-400/H-420, “Personal Needs Allowance” states the figure directly.
Why Arkansas’s figure isn’t the federal floor
Federal Medicaid law requires only a $30-a-month personal needs allowance as a floor; a state is free to set its own, higher figure by statute, regulation, or agency policy. Arkansas has done exactly that, setting $40.00/Month, effective 08/29/2022 (Medical Services Policy Manual date stamp, unamended since).
What the allowance covers, and what it doesn’t
The personal needs allowance pays for the things a facility’s daily rate doesn’t cover: clothing, haircuts, snacks, a phone or television, small personal purchases. It is deducted before the rest of a resident’s income is applied to the facility bill as the patient-pay (or post-eligibility treatment of income, PETI) amount. It is not extra money on top of what Medicaid already pays the facility; it is the one slice of a resident’s own income that Medicaid rules guarantee the resident, not the facility, keeps.
One exception or caveat worth knowing
A resident whose only income is SSI keeps $30 (the plain federal floor) instead of $40; the $40 figure is the operative amount for most facility residents and is the one reported here.
| Federal personal needs allowance floor | $30.00/month |
| Arkansas’s personal needs allowance | $40.00/Month |
| How far above the federal floor (calculated by comparing this state’s own figure to the $30.00 federal floor) | 33% higher |
| State citation | Arkansas DHS Division of County Operations, Medical Services Policy Manual, Section H-400/H-420, “Personal Needs Allowance” |
| What it says | “Subtract a forty-dollar ($40) PNA for most facility residents. NOTE: Facility residents whose only income is SSI will be allowed to keep thirty dollars ($30) as their PNA.” |
| Federal floor citation | 42 CFR § 435.725 (the federal $30.00/month personal needs allowance floor) |
Figures verified against Arkansas DHS Medical Services Policy Manual H-400 packet (MS Manual 08/29/2022), 42 CFR 435.725 (Cornell LII) and 42 U.S.C. 1396a(q) on September 30, 2026; the year the federal $30 floor was first set (stated as 1988) was not re-checked.
Every citation on this page was read directly from the state’s own Medicaid agency, administrative code, or official eligibility manual this session. General information, not legal or financial advice; a figure this specific can change with a budget cycle or a rule amendment, and a facility or state caseworker has the final say on any individual case.