Advocates: RI Must Put Higher Value On DD Workforce To Ensure Stability In Client Services

Image courtesy of RI Capitol TV

By Gina Macris

The incremental pay increase that Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo proposes for those who care for adults with developmental disabilities- about 34 to 41 cents an hour - is “much appreciated,” Tom Kane, CEO of AccessPoint RI, told the House Finance Committee recently.

But “it’s not enough,” Kane added quickly.

Entry-level workers making an average of $11.44 an hour, or more experienced colleagues paid an average of $12.50 an hour, are “often helping a person eat, shower, use the bathroom, or they could be helping someone learn how to drive their car,” Kane said.

“It is a completely and utterly important job, but based on the funding available, it is not really valued by our state,” Kane continued.

“ I’ve said this in this room a number of times. A budget is a statement of values, and what we’re saying is that this work isn’t worth enough money to make a living.”

To illustrate his point, Kane told Finance Committee members that he searched for jobs on the website Indeed.com to prepare for his testimony March 13 and found a posting from a kennel seeking someone to clean cages for $14 an hour.

“Not that I would disparage any job that anyone would have,” Kane said. “I think there should be dignity in all work. I think as a society we have to say, for those who care and support the people to live in the community, to try to have the best life possible, we need to fund the agencies to pay a reasonable rate.”

Kane spoke from the perspective of some three dozen private service providers in Rhode Island, the core of the state’s developmental disability service system. These agencies are trying to make ends meet while dealing with high job turnover and high vacancy rates, as well as the costly overtime it requires to ensure the safety of the vulnerable people in their care.

In the context of the state’s fee-for-service Medicaid reimbursement system, now in its eighth year, the concerns of the providers converge with those of a 2014 federal consent decree which spells out the civil rights of people who, through an accident of birth, spend a lifetime trying each day to rise to the challenge of diverse disabilities.

And in the past year, there has been growing pressure for change, both from those overseeing the implementation of the consent decree and from an expanding chorus of advocates.

In a “Week of Action” planned by the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island (CPNRI) March 26 through 28, providers and their supporters, including consumers and their families, will fan out under the State House rotunda to buttonhole individual legislators in the hours before the bell sounds shrilly at 4 p.m. calling the House and Senate to order.

In the fiscal year beginning July 1, Raimondo has proposed a $6.4 million budget increase targeted for pay raises, including $3 million in state revenue and $3.4 million in federal Medicaid funds. This sum would raise the wages of direct support workers by what state officials estimate as 43 cents an hour.

But the leaders of CPNRI and the Provider Council, another trade association, say that to stabilize the private system of developmental disability services, providers need about $28.5 million in state revenue, which would generate a roughly equal amount in federal Medicaid payments.

“We recognize that this is a substantial amount of money, but it is a result of chronic underfunding,” said Donna Martin and Peter Quattromani in a letter to Raimondo dated Jan. 9. Until March, Martin was executive director of CPNRI. Quattromani, executive director of United Cerebral Palsy of Rhode Island, represented the Provider Council.

Their reference to “chronic underfunding” alludes to “Project Sustainability,” the fee-for service funding model enacted by the General Assembly in 2011 with a $26-million budget cut. Project Sustainability was cited by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2014 as contributing to a segregated system of services that violated the integration mandate of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

With the closing of the Ladd School in 1994, Rhode Island was once first in the nation in de-institutionalizing adults with developmental disabilities and its efforts to include former residents in everyday life in the community. Today, 25 years after the Ladd School was shuttered, Rhode Island is ranked 32nd among the states in its inclusion efforts by CPNRI’s national affiliate, the American Network of Community Options and Resources.

Project Sustainability is currently the subject of two separate reviews, one by a special legislative commission and another by the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH), which has hired a consultant to scrutinize both the reimbursement rates and the fee-for-service model itself.

Between 2011 and 2012, Project Sustainability exacerbated a downward trend in funding for developmental disabilities that eventually leveled off but has not caught up with the pace of inflation, despite budget increases in recent years, according to a ten-year analysis done by CPNRI. The study used state budget figures and consumer price index information kept by the state Department of Labor and Training.

Chart Courtesy of CPNRI

Low wages have put Rhode Island service providers at a disadvantage in trying to recruit a variety of personal care workers like those who work with adults with developmental disabilities, experts say.

CPNRI reports that about one in three workers leave a developmental disability job every year, mostly, they say, because they can’t pay their bills. One in five positions remain vacant, driving up the cost of overtime necessary to ensure the safety of the vulnerable people in care, according to the trade association.

PHI National, long-term care consultants, have produced a chart comparing the earnings of personal care workers in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts that shows Rhode Island with the lowest wages and the least buying power relative to the minimum wage.

chart courtesty of PHI and CPNRI

Policy experts say that basic demographic data for the nation indicates a shortage of personal care workers in the next few decades. That was one of the key messages delivered by Mary Lee Faye, executive director of the National Association of State Directors of Developmental Disabilities Services, to the Project Sustainability study commission in January.

Meanwhile, the House Fiscal Office estimates that the governor’s proposed raise for front-line developmental disability workers would add add 41 cents to their average hourly wage, lifting it from $12.27 an hour to $12.68 an hour. The overall $6.4 million pay hike doesn’t include raises for supervisors or job development and support coordinators, the House Fiscal Advisor, Sharon Reynolds Ferland, has told the House Finance Committee.

Providers say the state’s estimates don’t match up with actual costs. The state funds 35 percent of overhead related to employment, including mandatory costs like health and dental insurance, workers compensation insurance, payroll taxes, paid time off and other items, according to a CPNRI policy paper.

In reality, providers say, these employee-related expenses cost 64 percent[1] of wages – a point CPNRI’s Martin and the Provider Council’s Quattromani made in their Jan. 9 letter to Raimondo.

Providers fill the gap between the available state and federal Medicaid funding and the actual costs of employee-related overhead by reducing the amount of the wage increase passed along to workers. Kane, in his testimony, said that for the lowest-paid direct care workers, Raimondo’s planned pay increase will not even cover the cost of a separate proposal she has made to increase the state’s minimum wage for all workers from $10.50 to $11.10.

In the last few years, individuals with developmental disabilities, their families, and providers have gained legislative advocates, most prominently Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown, who is the first vice-president of the Senate Finance Committee.

DiPalma, as chairman of the special legislative commission studying Project Sustainability, convinced a consultant involved in developing that fee-for-service model to return to Rhode Island and testify about his work last November.

Mark Podrazik, a principal in the Arizona-based Burns & Associates, made it clear that Project Sustainability was shaped in a frantic effort to control costs.

Mark Podrazik * Photo By Anne Peters

The firm ultimately was paid a total of $1.4 million to develop Project Sustainability and monitor how it affected spending for developmental disabilities services. (The funding model contains no provisions for measuring the impact of services on individuals.)

Podrazik testified that some of Burn’s key recommendations were ignored, including a proposed base pay of $13.97 an hour for direct care workers that would increase within a year or two to $15 an hour. That was in 2011.

Today, eight years later, advocates are still chasing that $15-hour wage. About a month ago, DiPalma and Rep. Evan Shanley, D-Warwick, introduced companion bills to raise direct care workers’ pay to $15 an hour by July 1, 2020. The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, William D. Conley, was among the co-sponsors of DiPalma’s bill.

More recently, DiPalma introduced a second bill that would require all private human service agencies under contract with the state to pay their employees at least 44 percent above the minimum wage at any given time. Both Conley and Senate President Dominick Ruggerio have signed on to this bill as co-sponsors.

A year ago at this time, Raimondo had proposed an $18.4 million cut in developmental disability services for reasons that were never spelled out in public. Raimondo rejected warnings of(BHDDH) that the move would result in waiting lists for services or cuts in programming.

The proposed cut appeared to be unacceptable to an independent court monitor who continues to oversee implementation of the 2014 consent decree. The agreement calls for integrated, community-based services that are inherently more costly than the facility-based system embedded in Project Sustainability.

In May, 2018, the monitor, Charles Moseley, obtained written assurances from Raimondo that she would continue to support the work of the consent decree, which in the moment meant restoring the almost all the $18-million cut.

In the courtroom, the judge who periodically oversees the status of the consent decree, John j. McConnell, Jr. of U.S. District Court, has indicated his willingness to issue orders to ensure that specific goals of the consent decree are met. At the same time, he said he couldn’t order the state to spend a certain amount to achieve them.

Meanwhile, Moseley has continued to keep abreast of budget developments. In February he wrote McConnell, saying Raimondo’s proposed budget “appears adequate” to cover a deficit in the current fiscal year and fund the consent decree in the budget beginning July 1.

Without mentioning how the Governor may have calculated developmental disability budgets in the past, Moseley made a point of saying he has received assurances that the latest figures are based on real-time data about the projected use of developmental disability services.

The state’s lawyer, Marc DeSisto, has assured him that “the Governor’s recommended budget accepts the most up-to-date projections for financing the current costs of the system to ensure no changes for individuals with DD and continued commitment to achieving Consent Decree outcomes,” Moseley wrote the judge.

Moseley put the current working budget for the private system of developmental disability services at about $229.4 million. Raimondo’s proposal adds about $4 million to finish the current fiscal year, for a total of $233.4 million. Moseley said the increase includes:

· $1 million for the estimated growth in the number of people receiving services

· $1.3 million for increased costs of providing services

· $645,000 to compensate for unrealized savings in moving group home residents into less costly residential options

· $500,000 in other priorities.

In the fiscal year beginning July 1, Moseley said, Raimondo would add about $7.3 million to the private developmental disability system, for a total of $240.2 million. That figure includes:

• $516,000 for continued growth in the number of people receiving services

• $2.7 million for increased costs in providing services.

• $6.4 million for the wage increase to direct care staff.

Those totals are offset by about $1.3 million in increased expectations for savings in residential costs and another million in savings from a reform initiative that didn’t start on time.

Moseley said all his figures were rounded off.

Deep in the background, BHDDH is quietly gearing up for a top-to-bottom analysis of Project Sustainability itself – a move applauded by DiPalma, providers, families and consumers. The lack of flexibility in services provided by Project Sustainability also has drawn the criticism of the court monitor.

Providers have said the funding formula does not allow them to plan on services for longer than three months at a time and makes it difficult for them to base their services in the community.

For example, Project Sustainability assigns staffing ratios according to the degree to which a person may be unable to do basic things independently, but doesn’t take into account the resources that person might need to get to a job – or hockey game – in the community.

Project Sustainability originally made it difficult for individuals to hold jobs in the community by providing work-related services only at the expense of other kinds of daytime supports.

In 2017, to comply with the work goals of the consent decree, BHDDH launched an add-on program of performance payments for providers for placing clients in community-based employment and for meeting job-retention goals.

DiPalma has said it is imperative that BHDDH finish a new rate model for private developmental disability services in time for Raimondo to introduce her budget to the General Assembly next January.

To satisfy the consent decree, the new design would have to focus on helping individuals lead regular lives in the community. Such a model would inevitably demand a greater financial commitment from the state and pose a new test of lawmakers’ values.

RI House Finance Committee Recommends Restoring DD Services To Current Levels

By Gina Macris

RI HOUSE SPEAKER Nicholas A. Mattiello  

In a midnight session June 8, the Rhode Island House Finance Committee added nearly $18 million to Governor Gina Raimondo’s original budget proposal for developmental disabilities in the fiscal year beginning July 1.

Both the House and Senate leadership and the governor herself supported increased funding for developmental disabilities after better-than-expected revenue projections were announced May 10.

The additional funding, all Medicaid money, includes about $8.8 million in state revenue and the remainder from federal funds, according to documents prepared by the House fiscal staff. The Finance Committee’s budget raised Raimondo’s bottom line for developmental disabilities from $250.8 million to $271.4 million. The state’s share would be $126.3 million.

Raimondo’s original budget would not have allowed the state to continue to implement a 2014 federal consent decree designed to correct violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act, according to an independent court monitor, who had been prepared to make recommendations to the judge in the case to ensure adequate funding.

The overall $9.55 billion statewide package passed the House Finance Committee, mostly along party lines without debate, on a vote of 15-3. Opposed were Republicans Patricia Morgan, a gubernatorial candidate representing West Warwick, Warwick, and Coventry,  Antonio Giarrusso, representing East Greenwich and West Greenwich, and Robert Quattrocchi, representing Scituate and Cranston.

The measure is slated to go before the full house June 15, and Chairman Marvin Abney-D-Newport, said there would be plenty of debate on the House floor.

 As it now stands, the budget maintains the level of developmental disability services at current reimbursement rates to private providers. The Finance Committee did not reverse a $3 million cut to the state-run group home system imposed by the Governor, and it does not improve wages for direct care workers, as has been the practice in the last three budgets.

Direct care workers in developmental disability services make significantly less than their counterparts in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Providers say they struggle to recruit, train and keep qualified employees, who often go to neighboring states or leave the field entirely. 

In a briefing with reporters before the Finance Committee convened, House Speaker Nicholas A. Mattiello said the budget did not go further in addressing needs of the Division of Developmental Disabilities because of the necessity to restore funding in many human service areas.

“We were thinking of all segments of society and balanced it as well as we can,” he said. “We took care of our economy, and we took care of our citizens.”

The Finance Committee added $15.7 million payments for hospitals and another $17.2 million to the Department of Children, Youth and Families for services for children and teenagers in state care. Some of the added DCYF funding would provide for older teens who choose to receive services until age 21 – an option that has been unavailable in recent years.

The House Finance Committee also granted a 10 percent rate hike to in-home caregivers of the elderly and disabled. Most of the individuals served by those workers do not have developmental disabilities, according to Sharon Reynolds Ferland, the House Fiscal Advisor. But Mattiello said there are significant savings to the state in keeping those individuals out of nursing homes.

The revised budget also reversed Raimondo’s plan to require Medicaid patients to shoulder co-pays for health care, although the original proposal was not designed to affect individuals with disabilities.

Just as the Finance Committee increased Medicaid reimbursement rates to hospitals to make them competitive with Massachusetts and Connecticut, Mattiello said, he believes wages for direct care workers probably should be raised to keep them in Rhode Island.

“Yes, I do believe we have to look at those rates,” he said in response to a question about the wages. He said direct care wages “should probably be increased but there’s so much resources, and when you run out, you run out.”

Mattiello held out the hope that direct care worker wages in developmental disabilities would be revisited next year.

He said he wants to continue to increase resources for developmental disabilities, “but that increase is incremental and slower than we would like.”

“We’re continuing to work on improving our economy so we can continue to work on the needs of society and balance those needs,” Mattiello said.

While the House leadership usually drives the budget, the Senate will weigh in after the package clears the lower chamber.

Court Monitor Says Court Order Not Needed To Ensure RI DD Funding; State Budget To Move Forward Thursday In House Finance Committee

By Gina Macris

An independent court monitor has advised a federal judge that a court order isn’t necessary to ensure adequate funding and staffing for Rhode Island’s developmental disability services.

In a June 1 report to Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. of U.S. District Court, the monitor, Charles Moseley, cited recent assurances from Governor Gina Raimondo that revisions will be made to the state budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 to enable the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) to continue implementing a 2014 consent decree correcting violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA.)  

After a positive report from the semi-annual Revenue Estimating Conference May 10, House Speaker Nicholas A. Mattiello and Senate President Dominick J. Ruggerio took the lead in promising to restore $18.4 million in reimbursements to private service providers that Raimondo had originally eliminated from her budget proposal for the fiscal year beginning July 1.  Raimondo's original proposal had been unacceptable to Moseley, who had told McConnell in April that the cut would leave BHDDH unable to maintain consent decree reforms.  

The May  Revenue Estimating Conference concluded the state would take in a total of $135 million more than had been previously projected to close out the existing budget and to fund the next one, but Mattiello warned that extra cash should not be viewed as a panacea, because of multiple demands on the state’s resources.

Those obligations could include an estimated $24 million in federal and state Medicaid funds the state has not budgeted for retroactive payments to nursing homes. Whether the state must make those payments is wrapped up in a lawsuit brought by nursing home operators in state court over reductions in reimbursements imposed by the Raimondo administration.

The nursing homes prevailed in the litigation and the state failed to file a timely appeal, with the administration blaming a lawyer at the Executive Office of Health and Human Services who simply missed a May 23 filing deadline. The state is now trying to convince the judge in the case to accept an appeal anyway.  

Payments to nursing homes would eat up about $12 million in state revenue, or 8 percent of the $135 million in extra state revenue lawmakers had been planning to use to fill holes in the budget – including reimbursements to private providers of developmental disability services. (The remainder of the retroactive payments would come from the federal government's share of the Medicaid program.) 

The revised budget is scheduled to go before the House Finance Committee the evening of Thursday, June 7.

Besides an enhanced bottom line on funding, the court monitor will be looking for the addition of three BHDDH employees to staff a quality improvement unit which is deemed critical to ensuring that current and future reforms adhere to consent decree standards.

It is not immediately clear how those three added staffers would be used. As late as the first week of May, the monitor and BHDDH officials had been at odds about both the number of officials needed in the quality improvement unit and their respective roles.   

The consent decree gets its authority from the 1999 Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that Title II of the ADA requires services for disabled individuals to be offered in the least restrictive environment that is therapeutically appropriate. That environment is presumed to be the community.

In 2014, the U.S. Department of Justice cited Rhode Island’s overreliance on sheltered workshops and adult day care programs as violations of  Title II of the ADA. In the consent decree, the state agreed to ten years of federal oversight while it transforms the segregated system of daytime services to an integrated one based in the community.

This article has been corrected to show that, depending on a judge's final ruling, half of an unbudgeted $24 million in retroactive payments to Rhode Island nursing home operators would come from state revenue.

RI Senate To Vote On $256.5 Million DD Budget

By Gina Macris

Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo’s request for an overall $10 million increase in developmental disability spending in the next fiscal year appears to be headed for full approval by the General Assembly, as the Senate prepares to vote on the $9.2-billion state budget before the current budget cycle closes June 30 and the July 4 holiday weekend begins. 

On June 22, the House ratified the recommendation of its Finance Committee, with Speaker Nicholas A. Mattiello, D-Cranston, saying in advance of the vote that legislators have heard the message of direct care workers making poverty-level pay in high-responsibility jobs.

The Senate Finance Committee is scheduled to act on the budget at a hearing June 27 at 2:30 p.m. in Room 211 of the State House.  A floor vote in the Senate is expected Thursday or Friday.

About $4 million of the developmental disability spending increase would be applied to the current budget and an additional $6 million would go into the new budget cycle beginning July 1. The total allocation for developmental disabilities in the next fiscal year would be $256.5 million.

Even as the Rhode Island House was deliberating, U.S. Senate Republicans in Washington unveiled a health care bill that would severely cut Medicaid funding -– the backbone of essential medical care and other support services for the poor and disabled throughout the country. Within 24 hours, enough Republican opposition to the bill emerged in the Senate to threaten its passage. 

The proposed state budget in Rhode Island includes a total of $11 million for one-time raises for home health care workers and those who work directly with adults with developmental disabilities. Those wage increases would raise the average hourly pay for developmental disability workers from about $11.14 to about $11.69 an hour.

The original language in Governor Raimondo’s proposal used a separate budget article to spell out assurances that the money set aside for the raises could not be used for anything else, but the House version eliminates that article and embeds those mandates elsewhere in the revised budget bill. 

Workers can expect to see the incremental boost in pay no later than Oct. 1. Three months later, on Jan. 1, 2018, the House-approved budget would raise the minimum wage from $9.60 to $10.10 an hour. On Jan. 1, 2019, the minimum wage would advance again, to $10.50 an hour.

State Sen. Louis DiPalma, the leader of a drive to raise the pay of developmental disability workers to $15 an hour by July 1, 2021, said the day after the House vote that he has already begun work on the next phase of the campaign.

Last fall, DiPalma’s “15 in 5” campaign issued an early call for direct care raises, while the executive branch was still working on the budget proposal. In January, when the governor submitted her budget to the General Assembly, she highlighted the pay increases, along with a hike to the minimum wage and other initiatives.  

Several bills intended to speed up the timetable for a $15 hourly wage were introduced in the House during the current session, including one sponsored by Rep. Jean Philippe Barros, D-Pawtucket, Deputy Majority Leader, which would set the starting date for that increase to next Jan. 1.

The prospective budget doesn’t support a $15 hourly rate, but Barros still got a hearing on his bill before the House Finance Committee on June 21.

Direct care workers do an “awful lot of work for some of the neediest” residents of Rhode Island, and “they certainly deserve the benefit for their labor,” Barros said.

Massachusetts is set to increase the wages of direct care workers to $15 an hour in 2018, a development that could exacerbate already high turnover in direct care work in Rhode Island.

Figures on turnover presented to the General Assembly in recent months range from 30 percent a year to 60 percent of new hires in the first six months. There are about three dozen developmental disability service agencies operating in Rhode Island and each one has a different rate of turnover.

Testifying in favor of Barros’ bill, Robert Marshall, spokesman for the Rhode Island Developmental Disabilities Council, said that high turnover, a problem for years, has had a negative impact on those who need care.

Moreover, the nature of the work is changing to emphasize more individualized services, Marshall said, an apparent allusion to new federal Medicaid requirements and federal court enforcement of changes in daytime developmental disability services under provisions of a 2014 consent decree.

The greater individualization means that jobs in the direct service field are no longer interchangeable, he said. 

“Massachusetts will be very happy for us to train the staff and then give them a nearly 50 percent increase” in pay, Marshall said.  In other words, he said, a worker in East Providence can drive an extra three miles and do the same job in Seekonk, Mass., for significantly more money.

The money that is now spent on training new workers and overtime to fill critical gaps in services would probably cover most of the pay increase, Marshall said.

Part of the $10-million increase in the developmental disability budget would be used to fill a $3 million shortfall in the current fiscal year in supplemental payments to private providers and to add another $500,000 to that allowance in the budget cycle that begins July 1. 

The combined increases would hike supplemental payments from $18.5 million to $22 million a year –about 10 percent of all reimbursements made to private providers of developmental disability services – a level that DiPalma, the vice-chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has flagged as a sign that the standard funding formula for individual clients is not working.

The supplemental payments reflect successful appeals, on a case-by-case basis, of a funding formula applied to a controversial assessment which Rhode Island uses to determine an individual’s ability to function independently. The funding formula does not take into account a client’s goals and preferences in determining individual authorizations – a problem cited by a federal court monitor overseeing reforms to the developmental disability system.

All developmental disability services in Rhode Island are funded by Medicaid at a ratio of slightly more than one federal dollar for every state dollar.

Medicaid has long been an entitlement program in which the federal government matches state outlays for a wide range of services, ranging from health care and nursing home services to specialized educational and therapeutic services for children with disabilities and community-based supports for disabled adults.

The U.S. Senate Republican bill – devised behind closed doors and released on June 22 - would set per-capita limits on federal Medicaid reimbursements to states and threaten many of the services Rhode Island now offers.

The entire Rhode Island Congressional delegation has slammed the bill, saying it amounts to a massive transfer of wealth to the rich at the expense of the poor, the elderly and the disabled through $600 billion in tax cuts.

In a statement, Sen. Jack Reed said, “Trumpcare-supporting Republicans can make all the claims they want, but their motives are obvious: they want massive tax cuts for the wealthiest at the expense of hardworking Americans whose lives, in many cases, depend on access to care.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said the measure “would gut Medicaid with even deeper cuts than the wretched House version. This will blow huge holes in state budgets, forcing terrible choices between opioid treatment, care for seniors, and students with disabilities. And that’s just the beginning.  It goes after women’s health care. It would allow insurance companies to charge seniors more, and sell plans that don’t offer the basic care Americans expect. It would be bad for Rhode Islanders.”

Governor Raimondo said she will join Reed, Whitehouse and Reps. David Cicilline and James Langevin in “active opposition to this disastrous proposal." 

She accused Congressional Republicans of “trying to pass an immoral piece of legislation,” putting “American and Rhode Island lives at risk so that millionaires and billionaires can get a tax cut.”

Mattiello: RI Direct Care Workers Have Been Heard

By Gina Macris

During recent deliberations on the state budget that emerged from the Rhode Island House Finance Committee last week, legislators considered very carefully testimony about the plight of the state’s most vulnerable citizens and those who care for them, particularly with respect to nursing homes, House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello said in a briefing June 20.

Mattiello                         RI state PHOTO

The Finance Committee’s budget prevents any further reductions to Medicaid reimbursement rates to hospitals and nursing homes and commits $11 million in federal and state Medicaid funds to raise the pay of home health care aides and those providing direct support to adults with developmental disabilities.    

“Thank you for the viewpoint,” he said of those who testified for the direct care raises, and we’re glad that in these difficult fiscal times we were able to accommodate that,” he said.

Mattiello’s remarks signaled a growing awareness over the last year about poverty-level wages and high turnover which has destabilized the direct care field and, many say, affected the quality of care.

Along the same vein, the proposed $9.2 billion spending package approved by the House Finance Committee promises to restore free bus passes for the elderly and disabled, at a cost of $3.4 million a year for the next two fiscal years.

The compromise budget that will go before the full House June 22 also puts $26 million into Mattiello’s signature car tax phase-out, enabling 150,00 vehicles to fall off the property tax rolls in the fiscal year that begins July 1. And it partially funds Governor Gina Raimondo’s free tuition plan, allowing two years of free attendance at the Community College of Rhode Island for students who maintain a 2.5 grade average and meet other conditions.

Mattiello said he was proud of the budget, which uses a variety of approaches to close a $134-million revenue gap and still manages to deliver on promises made to Rhode Islanders.

“I didn’t say I was happy with this budget. I said I was very proud of this budget,” Mattiello said.

“You work with what you have and you maximize the benefit to the taxpayers. That’s exactly what we did,” Mattiello said.

State Rep. Joseph N. McNarmara-D-Warwick, echoed Mattiello’s remarks, saying he was particularly proud of the “core values we have represented as the majority of Democrats” and "have defended in a tough budget,” including free tuition, raises for direct care workers and the prevention of erosion of reimbursements to hospitals and nursing homes.

But Mattiello interjected, “I’m going to stop you, Joe. This is not a Democratic caucus. These are the values of the House of Representatives.” McNamara, the chairman of the House Committee on Health, Education and Welfare, also chairs the state Democratic Party.

As for the cost-cutting that must be done to balance the budget – including $25 million in unspecified reductions – Mattiello said: “We conferred with the Governor and the Senate. The Governor believes that although this will be difficult, it’s attainable and we agreed it can be done. “

While the budget uses one-time revenue to close some gaps, it will be paired with one-time expenses and will not add to the state’s structural deficit, Mattiello said.

Even though revenues are lower than expected this year, the economy seems to be going in the right direction, with unemployment down to a level not seen since before the recession of 2008, Mattiello said.

“This is our year to continue our momentum,” he said.  “We’re not going to tax our way” out of the revenue shortfall, “we’re not going to cut our way out of it,” but “we hope to grow our way out of it” as the economy continues to improve.

RI House Finance Votes For DD Worker Raises, Free Bus Passes, Supplemental DD Services

By Gina Macris

Despite tense negotiations around a $134-million projected revenue shortfall in Rhode Island for the next fiscal year, the House Finance Committee has approved an $11-million increase in federal and state funds to provide raises for direct care workers supporting adults with developmental disabilities and home health care aides in the next fiscal year.

Early the morning of June 16, The House Finance Committee sent an overall $9.2-billion spending package to the full House, which is expected to vote Thursday, June 22.

The Finance Committee’s revised budget also includes $3.4 million a year for two years to restore free bus passes for the elderly and disabled. Since Feb. 1, low-income elderly and disabled riders on the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) have had to pay 50 cents each trip, and 25 cents for each transfer. During the next two years, the executive branch of government is to figure out a permanent solution to ensure that vulnerable Rhode Islanders have access to public transportation.

According to a House spokeswoman, the proposed budget adopts Governor Gina Raimondo’s request for raises for home health and direct care workers who support some of the state’s most vulnerable citizens, shouldering great responsibilities for poverty-level pay.

The Governor’s budget plan included $6.2 million — $3 million in state revenue and $3.2 million in federal Medicaid funds — for raises of about 5 percent for direct care employees of private agencies that provide most of the supports for adults with developmental disabilities.  Another $4.4 million –$2.2 million from state revenue and the rest from Medicaid – will raise the pay of home health care aides by 7 percent.

Assuming that the raises pass the House and Senate, some 4,000 developmental disability workers will see increases in their paychecks of about 55 cents an hour, before taxes, sometime before Oct. 1. They now make an average of $11.14 an hour, according to a trade association representing about two thirds of some three dozen agencies operating in Rhode Island.

The latest incremental boost in pay would mark the second consecutive year that home health aides and developmental disability workers would have received wage increases, although there appears to be a growing opinion in both the House and Senate that direct care workers remain woefully underpaid for the job they do.

Last fall, State Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown, launched a call for this year’s raises as the initial phase of a “15 in 5” campaign that would elevate direct care workers’ pay to at least $15 an hour in five years; by July 1, 2021. A resolution to that effect has passed the Senate Finance Committee, of which DiPalma is vice chairman.

Members of the House have proposed various bills or resolutions to reach that $15 mark sooner, or to ask the Executive Office of Health and Human Services to raise direct care workers’ pay by 28.5 percent to achieve parity with Connecticut and Massachusetts rates by October of this year. Those measures appear to have died in committee.

In hearings in both the House and Senate during the current session, however, legislators have heard testimony that Rhode Island has a tough time competing with Connecticut and Massachusetts for direct care workers, because those states are such an easy commute for many Rhode Islanders.

The House Commission on Vulnerable Populations has included a recommendation that the state strive for direct care wages that are competitive with neighboring states in its final report on its deliberations for the last several months.

During a recent meeting on a draft report, Commission chairman Jeremiah O’Grady, D-Lincoln, the Deputy Majority Leader, said it is clear that salaries for direct care workers have a relationship to quality of care and employee turnover.

“What we see are the most qualified employees going to other states,” he said, and “we hear about very high turnover rates – something like 60 percent – within the first six months” in Rhode Island.

Another factor that will undoubtedly have a bearing on future discussions of direct care pay is that the House Finance Committee agreed to phase in a 90-cent increase in the minimum wage, now $9.60 an hour. That rate would increase 50 cents, to $10.10 an hour, Jan. 1, 2018, and another 40 cents, to $10.50 an hour, on Jan. 1, 2019. That means that the pay of direct care workers will continue to hover around minimum wage or a little higher.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts has committed to raising its rates for direct care workers to $15 in 2018.

Complete figures on the developmental disability budget were not immediately available.But on June 19, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) said that Governor Raimondo got all she asked for in developmental disability spending from the House Finance Committee except for $200,000 in supplements to the current fiscal year and an equal amount in the fiscal year beginning July 1.

Last July 1, the state Division of Developmental Disabilities started the current fiscal year with an enacted budget of more than $246 million. Raimondo’s total request for fiscal 2018, beginning July 1, was $256.7 million.

Apart from the raises for direct care workers, the Division of Developmental Disabilities has sought funds to cover an estimated deficit of $3.6 million in the existing budget because of supplemental payments needed to respond to successful appeals of funding allocated for individual client services.  Those payments – not reflected in a separate line item – were nevertheless budgeted at $18 million in the fiscal year ending June 30, according to fiscal analyses done by both the House and Senate.

In the fiscal year beginning July 1, Raimondo asked for an additional $500,000 for supplemental service allocations. That increase would bring the total for such payments to just over $22 million annually. In a Senate Finance Committee hearing earlier this year, DiPalma, the committee’s vice chairman, noted that these extra payments totaled about 10 percent of all reimbursements to private agencies providing developmental disability services. That was too much, he said, indicating that equation the state uses to assign individual funding in the first place needs review.

The compromise budget passed by the House Finance Committee absorbed the $134-million projected revenue shortfall in the next fiscal year through a number of approaches: using one-time revenue, scaling back the Governor’s economic development initiatives, and making a myriad of cuts throughout state government, among others. 

 The Raimondo administration also is expected to make $25 million in unspecified cuts. The $25-million spending reduction and other provisions based on certain assumptions for the future make the budget a tricky one to balance, said DiPalma, a leading advocate for those with developmental disabilities and others receiving Medicaid-funded services.

For example, he said, in the BHDDH budget, there is an expectation that the Eleanor Slater Hospital will be able to shift $1.6 million in operating costs from state revenue to third-party payers during the current fiscal year and an equal amount in the fiscal year beginning July 1. He indicated that achieving all the designated savings in state revenue in the current fiscal year might be a challenge when only ten days remain in the budget cycle.

The BHDDH budget also contains a variety of cuts to capital projects, although a department spokeswoman said funds for improvements to the Eleanor Slater Hospital were transferred to the Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance (DCAMM), which is part of the Department of Administration.

Despite his concerns about the ability of the state to make the required adjustments to balance the budget, DiPalma said that developmental disability funding is moving in the right direction, with legislators listening to the facts and figures presented to them about the need for quality care.

A more comprehensive picture of the budget is expected to unfold as it goes before the full House and Senate over the next two weeks.

RI DD Service Providers Could Do Same Job for 13 Percent Less Money, Said 2011 Memo To Assembly

By Gina Macris

This article has been updated.

In a single day in 2011, the Rhode Island General Assembly slashed about $26.5 million, or 12.7 percent, from payments to private agencies which care for adults with developmental disabilities, some of the state’s most vulnerable citizens.

The massive cutback sent the privately-run developmental disability service system into a tailspin from which it has not yet recovered, even though the dollar amount has been restored.

Documents obtained by Developmental Disability News through public records requests indicate that the budget cutback was based on an unsupported assumption that the private agencies could uniformly deliver the same level of service with far less money.

Moreover, the records show how Project Sustainability, a set of regulations designed to assess the needs of persons with developmental disabilities and assign them a dollar value for services, seemed to function instead as an attempt to control spending – albeit with questionable success.

Today the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) spends more than $21 million a year to “supplement” funding authorizations for individual clients made through Project Sustainability. The supplemental payments amount to about ten percent of all the reimbursements the state makes to the private agencies. Much of the supplemental funding occurs when families and providers appeal the funding determinations successfully, making the case that the original authorizations were inadequate to provide needed services.

A spokesman for House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello defends Project Sustainability, saying that it’s brought accountability to disabilities spending.

Larry Berman said that “Project Sustainability changed a system that did not have a consistent payment model, could not provide information about what services were being provided or in what setting, and if any services were actually provided. It created a new billing system that could account for that.”

“All providers are paid uniform rates for the same services,” he said. Previously, each agency negotiated with the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH.) a monthly stipend for a bundle of services for each client.

Since 2011, the General Assembly has added $47 million to services for adults with developmental disabilities, Berman said.

Berman rejected the notion that the General Assembly contributed to conditions which led to a 2014 consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice and ten years of federal oversight of the state’s developmental disability system, which ends in 2024. 

Findings of the U.S. Department of Justice

In findings that led to the consent decree between the state and federal government, however, the DOJ linked Project Sustainability with violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA).

It said Project Sustainability restricted individuals’ access to regular jobs and non-work activities in the community – opportunities for choice that are guaranteed under Title II of the ADA.  The U.S. Supreme Court re-affirmed Title II in its 1999 Olmstead decision, saying that individuals with all types of disabilities are entitled to receive services in the least restrictive environment that is therapeutically appropriate. And that environment is presumed to be the community.

In its findings, the DOJ noted that the “precipitous state budget cuts in 2011” exacerbated the problem of retaining qualified staff – a problem that today is described by providers as a “crisis”, despite an incremental pay raise to direct-care workers adopted in the current budget. Workers would get a second small raise in the next fiscal year, according to the budget proposal of Governor Gina Raimondo.

RI Allowed Less Money Than Provider Costs

To understand how the BHDDH budgeting process got more than $20 million off course, a history of Project Sustainability is in order.

In 2011, then-Governor Lincoln Chafee recommended $10 million to $12 million in cuts to developmental disability services, but the leadership of the General Assembly wanted bigger reductions. It first sought to limit eligibility, but backed off when an outside healthcare consultant under contract to BHDDH advised against it, according to a memo obtained through a public records request.

The consultant, Burns & Associates, said restricting eligibility would probably violate the federal “maintenance of effort” requirement for federal Medicaid funding and would not be approved by the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services.  All developmental disability services are funded through the federal-state Medicaid program.

Five days after that opinion, dated May 26, 2011, BHDDH sent the General Assembly a memo describing a “methodology” for steep cuts to dozens of reimbursement rates, most of them between 17 and 19 percent below a target rate that was established after a year’s research that included data from the providers themselves on their costs. In undercutting that “target” rate, BHDDH said that the state could not afford to spend more, the memo said.

“We did not reduce our assumption for the level of staffing hours required to serve individuals,” the memo said.

“In other words, we are forcing the providers to stretch their dollars without compromising the level of services to individuals,” said the memo.

Craig Stenning, who was BHDDH director at the time, recently declined all comment for this article and ended a phone conversation with a reporter before any questions could be asked.

The General Assembly doubled Chafee’s recommended reductions in reimbursements on the basis of a  last-minute floor amendment in the House, after the public had been cleared from the gallery of the chamber, early the morning of July 1, the final day of the General Assembly’s regular session that year. The budgeted reduction was $24.5 million, but the actual cut eventually totaled $26.5 million, according to the state’s figures on actual spending.

The vote also established Project Sustainability, the bureaucratic process - still largely in place today – that the DOJ later found violated the civil rights of clients of BHDDH. The primary elements:

• The Supports Intensity Scale (SIS), a standardized assessment designed to determine needed for an individual to accomplish his or her goalls.
•  A formula or algorithm developed by Burns & Associates to assign funding to individuals according to one of five different levels or tiers, designated by letters A through E. 
• A billing system that requires providers to document face-to-face time with clients in 15-minute increments in order for them to be reimbursed for day services.  

Since 2010,  BHDDH and the Executive Office of Human Services (EOHHS) have paid Burns & Associates about $1.4 million to introduce Project Sustainability, develop the equation, or algorithm, and monitor its use.

DOJ Cited "Seeming Conflict of Interest"

In challenging the state’s treatment of persons with disabilities in 2014, the Department of Justice found, at a minimum, “a seeming conflict of interest” in the way Rhode Island used the SIS as a “resource allocation tool”, because BHDDH both administered the assessment and determined the budgets.

The DOJ findings continued:

“The need to keep consumers’ resource allocations within budget may influence staff to administer the SIS in a way that reaches the pre-determined budgetary result.”

“Numerous persons stated that this lack of neutrality, and apparent tension between the need to assess the full spectrum of an individual’s support needs and state efforts to cut costs, has negatively. impacted the resources individually allocated to people with I/DD (intellectual or developmental disabilities “Further,” the DOJ said, “we received considerable feedback from parents, family members, advocates, direct support staff, and providers that the individuals administering the SIS lack the training, qualification, or experience working with individuals with I/DD necessary to make resource allocation decisions on behalf of individuals with I/DD.”  

The DOJ also said that “we find that several formative practical and procedural barriers exist under Project Sustainability that contribute to individuals’ inability to access the resources, including funding allocations, that they need to purchase services like supported employment and integrated day planning.”

And the department found inflexibility in the requirement that workers be “face to face” with clients for their employers to receive reimbursement for services. Through the consent decree, the “face to face” provision has been eliminated in a pilot program to help adults with developmental disabilities seek regular jobs in the community.

Families and service providers routinely appealed adverse funding allocations, and many of them were successful, resulting in supplemental payments for a year. But the following year, they received notice that the supplemental payments would be withdrawn, and the appeal process began all over again.

Until Stenning left office in 2015, parents and service providers were denied copies of the actual SIS scores. Some parents have said BHDDH officials told them the questionnaires, developed by the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD), could not be released because they contained private propriety information.

That’s changed. Today developmental disability officials have acknowledged that the completed questionnaires are personal health care records that must be made available to patients or their guardians, according to federal law. BHDDH has never released the funding formula. 

Parents also have complained publicly that social workers administering the interviews either argued with them and with providers about their responses or that they wrote down scores different from the ones offered by family members and providers.

AAIDD Defends SIS

Margaret Nygren, executive director of AAIDD,  which created the SIS, said it is a “well-established, scientifically valid, replicable tool” designed to measure support needs, and those who administer it must complete a “very rigorous training program” that includes an “annual recheck to make sure they are not drifting what we are training them to do.”

“It is certainly possible someone could get through the training and not apply what they’ve learned,” she said. “It’s not the kind of thing we’d like to see happen,” Nygren said. But she suggested it would be the rare exception rather than the rule.

In December, 2015, Wayne Hannon, then Deputy Secretary of EOHHS for Administration, tried to get a handle on the amount of money that BHDDH spent on supplemental payments outside the regular funding authorization process. These supplemental payments are not reflected as a separate line item in the budget.

Hannon asked Burns & Associates to figure out how much money the state could save if all the supplemental payments were eliminated. In a nine-page memo, the consultants concluded that the state could save a total of $13 million if all the supplemental payments were curtailed, but they stopped short of recommending such a move, saying they did not have enough information to know if the supplements were in fact warranted or used.

In the analysis that led to the conclusion, Burns & Associates' figures suggested there was a great deal of variability in SIS scores, even though the needs of particular individuals usually can be expected to remain fairly constant over time. For example, about 40 percent of those who had been assessed twice over a three-year period, or 726 of 1,798 individuals, had a change in funding levels the second time around, according to the consultants. In a smaller sample of 599 individuals, Burns & Associates said about 54 percent of funding authorizations decreased and the remainder increased.

AAIDD’s Nygren, who saw the memo, said the changes have to do with the funding algorithm created by the state, not the SIS itself. A small change in SIS scores could result in a change in funding, depending on how the formula is constructed, she said. BHDDH has not responded to requests for the formula. 

SIS And Funding Formula Updated    

The extent to which re-assessments generated changes in funding authorizations, whether up or down, raised eyebrows when they came to the attention of state developmental disability officials in the summer of 2016. 

At the time, the state had just promulgated a new policy declaring that the SIS would be administered solely on the basis of an individual’s need for support, in response to a federal court order that had been issued to enforce the consent decree.

 Meanwhile, Jane Gallivan, an experienced administrator of developmental disability services, had just been hired as a consultant and interim director of developmental disabilities. 

 Gallivan later recommended the state switch to an updated version of the SIS, which she said she believed would be more accurate in capturing clients’ needs, particularly for those requiring behavioral and medical supports. Burns & Associates also was re-hired to re-tool the funding formula.

The conversion to the so-called SIS-A included the retraining of all the interviewers and was launched in November, 2016, in the hope that the number of appeals – and supplemental payments – will come down.  Initial reports on the results of the SIS-A indicate that overall, they result in higher funding authorizations, according to developmental disability officials.

In the meantime, the current BHDDH budget allows for $18.5 million for supplemental payments, but in the first three quarters of the fiscal year the department went $3 million over that authorization, according to a recent House fiscal presentation. And Governor Raimondo seeks $22 million in supplemental payments in the fiscal year beginning July 1.

Taking in these numbers on overruns in the supplemental payments at a recent Senate Finance Committee hearing, Sen. Louis DiPalma told BHDDH officials to “look at the equation” that assigns funding authorizations to adults with developmental disabilities.

DiPalma and Rep. Teresa A. Tanzi, D-Narragansett and South Kingstown, have sponsored companion legislation that would make developmental disability caseload part of the semi-annual caseload estimating conference, used by both the executive and legislative branches of government to gauge expenses for Medicaid and public assistance.

DiPalma also has sponsored a separate bill that would require the SIS to be administered by an independent third party to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

AAIDD recommends that states take steps to ensure “conflict-free” administration of the SIS, a point noted by the DOJ in its 2014 findings.

Court Monitor Has A Say

The independent court monitor in the implementation of the consent decree would go a step further and uncouple the SIS from the funding mechanism altogether.

The monitor’s reports to the U.S. District Court say the SIS should be used for “person-centered planning,” a bedrock principle of the consent decree, which puts the focus on the needs and preferences of individuals, rather than trying to fit their services into a pre-determined menu of choices, as is now the case.

The monitor, Charles Moseley has said the SIS should be used as a guide for developing an individualized program of services, and then funding should be applied to deliver those services. Currently, the funding defines the scope of the services.

Moseley has put the state on a quarterly schedule of progress reports toward implementing “person-centered planning.”                

The changes have as-yet undefined budget implications for the state in the future.

Tom Kane, CEO of AccessPoint RI, a provider, explained to a subcommittee of the House Finance Committee in a recent hearing that it will be inherently more expensive to provide services in the community than it has been historically to have one person working with ten clients in a room in a sheltered workshop or day program.

There is now only slightly more in the private developmental disability system than there was in 2010, he said.  (The General Assembly has approved $218.3 million in reimbursements to private providers for the current budget cycle, or $10.2 million more than was spent in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2010, according to state budget figures.)

“There are more people in the system” and “the requirements of the consent decree are far more extensive than the kind of supports we were providing,”  Kane said.

He said he’s “definitely in favor” of Governor Gina Raimondo’s budget proposal, which would add $10 million to the system over the next 15 months, but he believes the available funding is only half of what is needed to stabilize private provider agencies and ensuring their clients get the “services they deserve and require.”

Budget Testimony: Need For DD Raises Critical, Stable Services Demand Double Current Funding

tom Kane                         RI capitol tv Image

By Gina Macris 

This article has been updated. 

As others had done before him, Tom Kane told members of the House Finance Committee that he “could not stress enough” the importance of the General Assembly approving an additional $6.1 million to lift the poverty-level pay of some 4,000 front-line employees of private agencies under contract with the state to care for adults with developmental disabilities.  

At the same time, Kane, CEO of AccessPoint RI, one of those private agencies, said in a hearing April 11 that the overall funding for developmental disabilities is only about 50 percent of what is needed for service providers to regain the financial stability they once had and help their clients receive the supports they need and deserve. 

All together Governor Gina Raimondo seeks General Assembly approval for raising the currently enacted developmental disability budget of $246.2 million by $10.5 million over the next 14 months, with $4.4 million of the increase applied before June 30. Another $6.1 million would be added for the fiscal year beginning July 1, for a total of $256.7 in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2018.

Kane explained to members of the Finance Committee’s Human Services Subcommittee, led by Rep. Teresa A. Tanzi, D-South Kingstown and Narragansett), the different kinds of pitfalls he saw in Raimondo’s attempts to offset the cost of the raises by cutting expenses in other areas – or not covering some necessary spending at all.  

For example, Kane said, AccessPoint had a $107,000 increase in health insurance rates this year. ”There is no money” to cover that cost, he said. “We spend almost $1.2 million in health insurance for 158 people,” he said.  Kane said he could not expect his employees, many of whom make less than $11 an hour, to contribute more to health insurance, so other adjustments were made. He did not elaborate. 

“But at some point there’s going to be a collision between all these additional costs” and direct care workers, Kane said. In written remarks, he said the “cost of other insurances, building maintenance, rent, vehicles, fuel and office supplies continue to increase, adding to the financial strain on organizations. These costs should not be seen as extraneous. They directly relate to our ability to focus our full attention on good quality service provision,” Kane said.

He also zeroed in on some line-item savings that Raimondo has budgeted to offset the cost of the second consecutive raise for direct care workers, particularly the plan to reduce group home costs by $2.1 million in state funds. That ongoing effort, driven by economic and policy considerations, aims to move group home residents to less costly shared living arrangements in private homes - a process that requires clients to actively agree to the change. 

During the transition, there must be a consideration for maintaining the living arrangements of the individuals left behind in the group homes, Kane said, recalling a case in which two of four people in one AccessPoint home opted for shared living. Because the agency could not afford to keep the house operating with only two residents, it sought supplemental funds from the Division of Developmental Disabilities for a few months to cover outstanding expenses while it figured out its long-range plan, Kane said. The home finally closed, he said.

The example illustrates how, during a transition, “you are balancing two systems at the same time, “ Kane said.

“If you don’t pay attention to the current system with the same amount of zeal as the new system, people will get lost,” he said.

In fact, the state so far has been unable to realize much savings from the emphasis on shared living, only $100,000 of a target of $2.6 million in state funds in the current fiscal year, according to officials of the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH).

Since last July, a total of 48 group home residents have committed to shared living. That figure is 18 shy of a target of 66 individuals for the fiscal year ending June 30.

Kerri Zanchi, Director of the Division of Developmental Disabilities, said that of the 48, 28 have moved since December, when the division began addressing issues that were barriers to shared living arrangements, like a need for physical modifications to some houses to make them more easily accessible, as well as extra medical and behavioral supports needed in the host homes. She said the division is also considering a range of other alternatives to group home living.

Ultimately, Kane said, a budget is a “representation of the values of our state.”  The care for people with disabilities and the salaries paid to caregivers either will reflect the dignity and respect afforded valuable members of society, or they won’t, Kane said.

 “I understand you have a lot of very difficult decisions to make,” he told the legislators, “and the numbers (revenues) aren’t looking great this year, which are going to make all those decisions even tougher.”

But Kane asked them to look at historical spending for developmental disability services, which he said are now only $9 million more than they were in 2010. In the meantime the demands of a 2014 federal consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as new Medicaid rules for Home and Community Based Services (HCBS), make the job of supporting individuals with disabilities much more complex and expensive, he said. 

Traditionally, he said, support has been provided in “congregate” settings, or facilities “where you have groups of ten people with one staff person. “

“Under the consent decree they have to be either at a job or in the community,” he said. Those settings demand ratios of one staffer for each client, or no more than three clients, depending on the circumstances, Kane said.  In addition, the consent decree requires job coaches to be trained to a specific certification. and trained workers will demand higher pay, Kane said.t

The latest statistics indicate the current average pay for direct care workers is $11.14 an hour, before taxes, a figure that reflects a raise of about 32 cents effective last July 1, according to Donna Martin, executive director of the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island (CPNRI), a trade association which represents 25 of some three dozen private providers of developmental disability services.

The hourly reimbursement rate the state pays the employers for direct care workers is $11.91, which includes both wages and most – but not all – of employers’ actual costs for overhead and fringe benefits. That figure is still lower than the hourly reimbursement rate of $12.03 the General Assembly authorized in July, 2011  at the same time it cut a total of $24 million for private provider services, according to a chart prepared by James Parisi of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals.

In October, 2011, three months after the General Assembly acted, BHDDH reduced the actual reimbursement rate to $10.66 an hour, according to Parisi’s calculations.  Since then, the rate has been climbing incrementally to its current level of $11.91.

Parisi represents workers at the Trudeau Center in Warwick, where the starting salary is now $10.71 an hour.

Tori Flis, a service coordinator at one agency, which she did not name, said that even though there has been a slight increase in wages in the last year, the turnover is “just as high.”

Martin, of CPNRI, put the average turnover at one out of three workers a year, or 33 percent, although it varies from one agency to another.  Employers are unable to fill one out of six vacancies, and it costs an agency an average of $4900 every time it must search for a replacement and train a new hire, Martin said.  

Markella Carnavalle, who works at Trudeau, described the impact that turnover can have on individuals with developmental disabilities.

One client, who had grown attached to a worker who had to leave, was “crying for weeks,” she said.

That person had behavioral issues and didn’t want to work or eat, Carnavalle said. The client believed the worker left because “they didn’t want to be with me,” Carnavalle said, but “you can’t say the person needed more money. They don’t look at it that way.”

“You become a part of their lives and they become a part of yours” over time, Carnavalle said.

Flis, meanwhile, said the workers she supervises all have two and three jobs to make ends meet. Some work as many as three consecutive 12-hour shifts at different agencies – a total of 48 hours straight.

Those kinds of conditions lead to burnout, abuse and neglect, Flis said. The only reason she can afford to work one job at Trudeau is that she is married to a teacher who has a good salary and fringe benefits, including a pension, Flis said.

In another part of the current budget,  BHDDH officials and the legislators disagreed on whether there is funding for a developmental disabilities ombudsman, a position approved by the General Assembly last year after a woman died in a state-run group home. The state-run residential system is separate from the private system. 

The legislators and a member of the House fiscal advisory staff, Linda Haley,  said a total of $170,000 had been included in the BHDDH budget for the position.

Representing BHDDH, Christopher Feisthamel, the chief financial officer, and Zanchi, the developmental disabilities director, both said they understood it was an “unfunded mandate.”  Haley and BHDDH officials spoke informally after the hearing but reached no agreement on the status of the position.

(This article has been updated to correct the total cost of health insurance for AccessPoint RI, which is $1.2 million, not $12 million, according to CEO Tom Kane.)

Plan To Boost DD Worker Pay in RI Gets House Finance Hearing Wednesday

By Gina Macris

Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo’s proposed pay raise for workers providing direct care to adults with developmental disabilities will get a hearing before a subcommittee of the House Finance Committee Wednesday, Feb. 8.

Raimondo has set aside $6 million for 5 percent wage increases for these workers, who are now paid an average of $11.18 an hour. Her proposal would increase their hourly pay by about 56 cents, to an average of $11.74.

The governor's budget says that poverty-level wages for these workers have resulted in a “hiring crisis” that “impedes the ability of community agencies to implement the state’s obligations” under provisions of a federal consent decree mandating reforms in the developmental disability service system to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Low wages have led to annual turnover estimated at 33 percent,  with agencies experiencing staff vacancy rates of up to 25 percent, leading to high overtime costs and worker burnout, according to the budget document. The shortage of workers in Rhode Island is all the more challenging because neighboring Massachusetts and Connecticut pay about $1 to 2 dollars an hour more for the same work..

Moreover, Massachusetts has committed to a $15 hourly rate by 2018 for direct care workers in field of developmental disabilities. There is a similar drive in Rhode Island to raise workers’ pay to $15 in five years, but the budget provision to be heard Wednesday deals only with the fiscal year beginning July 1.

The hearing is scheduled after the full House ends it session, he end of the House session, about 4:30 to 4:45 p.m. and it will be held in Room 35 in the basement of the State House.

Kevin Nerney, spokesman for the Rhode Island Developmental Disabilities Council, urges individuals concerned about the stability of the developmental disability service system to attend the hearing or write or call members of the legislature.  Click here for the meeting agenda, which includes a link to the full text of the proposal to increase wages, as well as another budget article to be heard the same day in connection with the duties of the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals in treating substance abuse.

Written testimony also may be submitted to the House Finance Committee through its clerk, Christopher O’Brien, at cobrien@rilegislature.gov.

General Assembly Approves $15.4 Million Increase For DD; Worker Raises Are Assured

By Gina Macris 

Rhode Island’s developmental disability budget for the next fiscal year includes assurances that aa total of $9.1 million in Medicaid money will be spent to raise pay for direct support workers and to begin transforming the state’s system of services for those with intellectual challenges.

Shortly after 1:30 am on Saturday, June 18, The Senate approved total developmental disability funding of $246.2 million beginning July 1 in concurrence with the House vote taken Wednesday. That total, almost all of it state and federal Medicaid funds, is nearly $15.4 million more than the General Assembly approved last year at this time for the current budget, which closes on June 30.

New budget language ensures that $4.5 million in state revenue earmarked for worker raises and performance-based contracts can’t be used for anything else in the overall appropriation of the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) in the fiscal year that begins July 1.

The language is significant. In the recent past, as much $9 million has been budgeted in a single year to raise the wages of some 4,000 workers who provide direct support services, but the money has gone instead to help close deficits in the BHDDH budget.

The workers make an average of about $11.50 an hour, often less than the clients they support in jobs in fast food restaurants. Many of the direct support staff receive public assistance,  according to testimony presented to the House and Senate finance committees during the current legislative session.

The big difference between this year and past legislative sessions has been a federal court case aimed at enforcing a 2014 consent decree in which Rhode Island agreed to transform sheltered workshops and segregated day programs into a community-based system of services over a 10-year period. The decree settled a U.S. Department of Justice investigation that found the sheltered workshops violated the integration mandate of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the 1999 so-called Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court which clarified that requirement.

In late January of this year, Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. of U.S. District Court became actively involved in monitoring the state’s compliance with the consent decree. In May, he issued an order putting the state at risk for contempt if it does not meet any one of nearly two dozen specific goals.

One of the requirements in the order is that the state adopt increased funding sought by Governor Gina Raimondo for developmental disabilities in the next fiscal year “in order to fund compliance with the Consent Decree.” The order does not mention a specific dollar amount.

Several other requirements in the order collectively set an August 1 deadline for implementing appropriate raises for direct support staff, regular supervision of workers, and a pilot group of performance-based contracts for supported employment services.

It’s not yet clear how much money the raises will add to the workers’ pay, or what the incentives will be in the performance-based contracts.

Initially, Raimondo’s budget proposal included a little more than $5 million for raises of 45 cents an hour, but that sum was not considered enough to provide performance initiatives to the private agencies that provide most of the developmental disability services in Rhode Island. .

After improved state revenue projections in May, Raimondo added another $4 million to wages and other increases to providers. .  

Raimondo sought protective language to segregate state revenue budgeted for pay increases for developmental disability workers, but that wording was eliminated in the budget passed by the House Finance Committee.

Sometime before the June 15 vote on the House floor, however, new and more detailed language was inserted, a House spokesman confirmed Friday night. 

The new language says that $4.5 million of general revenue “shall be expended on private provider direct support staff raises and associated payroll costs to include targeted increases associated with performance-based contracting and system transformation incentives” authorized by BHDDH.

Because funding for developmental disability services is part of the state’s Medicaid program, the $4.5 million in state revenue set aside for raises would be matched by federal funds, for a total of slightly more than $9 million..

Raises also must be approved by the Office of Management and Budget and the Executive Office of Human Services, according to the budget language. Changes in reimbursement methods must be approved by the Governor’s office and OMB.

RI House Passes DD Budget Unchanged From Finance Committee Recommendation

By Gina Macris

(Correction: While the House did not change the appropriation recommended by the House Finance Committee, language was inserted prior to the floor debate that makes sure $5 million in state revenue cannot be used for anything else other than wage increases for direct support workers and performance incentives for the private agencies that employ them.) 

Rhode Island's developmental disability budget passed the House unchanged from the last week's finance committee recommendation in a floor vote shortly before midnight June 15. The House sent the entire $8.9 billion state budget to the Senate.

In developmental disability spending, the bottom line would be $246.2 million, part of $1.4 billion in human services expenses for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

 In June, 2015, the General Assembly authorized $230.9 million in developmental disability spending for the current fiscal year, which ends in two weeks.  As part of its action late Wednesday night, the House added nearly $9.6 million to that figure as a supplemental appropriation. 

The bottom line difference between the start of Fiscal Year 2016 and Fiscal Year 2017, which takes effect July 1, is nearly $15.4 million.

The new budget would include $9.1 million to raise the pay of staff of private providers who work directly with adults having developmental disabilities and to change the way the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) reimburses service providers.

These steps are necessary to satisfy some of the requirements of a federal court order issued in May to enforce a 2014 consent decree requiring a shift from sheltered workshops and segregated day programs to supported employment and community-based activities that comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Pay increases would be coupled with yet-to-be negotiated performance-based contracts between the state and private agencies that help their clients get regular jobs and enjoy integrated leisure activities. 
 
Governor Gina Raimondo had proposed language that would specifically allocate $2.5 million in state funds for the raises. Each of those dollars would be matched by roughly an equal amount of federal Medicaid funding, for a total of about $5.1 million.

The House Finance Committee, however, removed the protective language around the $2.5 million in state funding, meaning that if BHDDH runs a deficit – as it has for the last eight years – the money set aside for raises could be used to help close the gap. (See correction at top of story.) 

Raimondo originally sought to pay for requirements of the consent decree in both the current fiscal year and the new fiscal year by using savings that would result from encouraging group home residents to move to less expensive shared living arrangements in private homes, but that initiative fell far short of its goal.

Her initial budget figured on saving $3.1 million in the current budget and $16.6 million in the next budget, by making as many as 500 new shared living arrangements.

However, the slow pace of these transfers led the governor to ask the General Assembly to put back all $3.1 million in group home costs in the existing fiscal year, and to reduce savings by $10.2 million in group home costs in the budget beginning July 1. The House agreed.  As a result, BHDDH is expected to save $6.4 million in group home costs in Fiscal Year 2017.

The House refused Raimondo’s request to add $5.8 million to the next budget for a caseload increase, with the finance committee recommendation saying the caseload has been stable at about 4,000 persons.

The House budget language adds extensive reporting requirements intended to keep the General Assembly abreast of BHDDH compliance with the federal consent decree, Rep. Eileen Naughton, D-Warwick, said on the House floor.

BHDDH is already required to provide key fiscal officials in the General Assembly and the governor’s office monthly reports on the developmental disability caseload and expenditures.

The new language encompasses not only information required by the U.S. District Court but other factors affecting the budget. It says:

“The department (BHDDH) shall also provide monthly the number of individuals in a shared living arrangement and how many may have returned to a 24-hour residential placement in that month. The department shall also report monthly any and all information for the consent decree that has been submitted to the federal court as well as the number of unduplicated individuals employed, the place of employment and the number of hours working. The department shall also provide the amount of funding allocated to individuals above the assigned resource levels, the number of individuals and the assigned resource level and the reasons for the approved additional resources.  The department shall also provide the amount of patient liability to be collected and the amount collected as well as the number of individuals who have a financial obligation.”

(This article has been updated.)

DD Service Provider Takes 'Wait and See' Attitude on Budget, Citing History of Disappointment

By Gina Macris

Until Rhode Island’s appropriation for developmental disabilities is released to the agency that administers it, the amount of money that is finally approved by the General Assembly will be  “just a number,” according to a member of the Employment First Task Force who follows legislative affairs.

photo by anne peters 

Tom Kane, (left), CEO of AccessPoint RI, a provider of developmental disability services, said that in the past several years, there have been three unsuccessful attempts to raise the pay of support staff for adults with developmental disabilities.

All the extra money, between $4 million and $9 million in a single fiscal year, has gone instead to fill a structural deficit in the budget of the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH), Kane said.

On Wednesday, June 15, the House is expected to vote on an appropriation that would add $9.1 million for raises for about 4000 workers and create a new reimbursement method for some two dozen agencies providing most of the direct services for individuals with intellectual or developmental disabilities.(

The budget proposal voted out of the House Finance Committee, however, does not include Governor Gina Raimondo’s request for $5.8 million for a caseload increase.

Kane indicated that amount of money could also represent the structural deficit in the next fiscal year's developmental disability budget. BHDDH officials say the deficit averages $4.6 a year.

Based on past experience, the money set aside for raises could once again be reserved to fill the deficit, Kane told the group.

The Employment First Task Force was created by a 2014 federal consent decree to serve as a bridge between the community and state governmental agencies that administer developmental disability services. The decree resulted from a federal investigation that found Rhode Island’s sheltered workshops violated the the integration mandate of the Americans with Disabilities Act., clarified in the 1999 Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Mary Madden, the state’s consent decree coordinator, said, “People at the General Assembly are not into the consent decree at all.”

They don’t understand why developmental disability services cost so much, she said,  because they don’t understand “what it is to provide support 24 hours a day.”

Whatever figure is adopted – the current proposal has a bottom line of about $246 million dollars – the U.S. Department of Justice and an independent court monitor will review it. If either of them has the opinion it is not enough for the state to comply with the consent decree, they could ask the judge in the case to hold a show-cause hearing as to why the state should not be held in contempt.  

More Money for Developmental Disability Services; Is it Enough to Satisfy the Court?

By Gina Macris

The Rhode Island House Finance Committee’s recommended budget for developmental disabilities could represent a glass half full or a glass half empty. 

Neither description is likely to satisfy the U.S. District Court, which recently issued an order saying, in effect, that the state must provide developmental disabilities programs a full glass.  

The House Finance Committee would give Governor Gina Raimondo most of what she asked for in the next fiscal year, including $5.1 million to raise the pay of direct care workers making poverty wages and another $4.1 million to restructure the way private service providers are reimbursed. 

But the recommended budget also is built on two iffy assumptions – that the developmental disability agency will be able to save $6.4 million in housing costs and that the caseload will remain the same, with about 4,000 people receiving services. Raimondo’s budget asked for a $5.8 million increase for 100 new cases. 

If either assumption misses the mark, there might not be enough money in the budget to shore up the private service providers, putting at risk at least some of a total of $9.1 million set aside for the raises the service providers want and performance-based contracts the state wants in order to restructure the way it reimburses the private agencies and satisfy part of the U.S. District Court order. 

All of the Governor’s request – a total of  $16.9 million in added federal and state Medicaid revenue-  is needed to correct chronic underfunding in the budget of the Department of Behavioral Health, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH), the department director, Maria Montanaro, told the House Finance Committee in a recent hearing.

 For the last eight fiscal years, including the current one, the bills BHDDH gets from service providers have exceeded budgeted amounts, Montanaro said. 

Raimondo sought to protect wage increases by specifying in her original proposal that $2.5 million of general revenue “shall be expended on private provider Direct Support Staff raises” in the next fiscal year. That sum would be matched by federal Medicaid dollars for a total of $5.1 million that would pay for 45-cent hourly wage increases.

 The protective language around the $2.5 million in state revenue has disappeared from the House Finance Committee’s recommendation. 

With the protective language gone, there could be a replay of the current budget, in which $4 million was originally set aside to boost workers’ pay but never made it into their pockets, going instead to help narrow a hole in the budget. 

Raimondo herself is counting on the first assumption, that BHDDH will save $6.4 million in the next fiscal year by convincing group home residents that they would be happier living with able-bodied housemates in private homes in the community. These are called shared living arrangements. Simply relocating people would run counter to federal law.

The $6.4 million in savings represents a fraction of Raimondo’s original estimate. In February, when she first released her budget for the 2017 fiscal year, she proposed saving $16.6 million by moving 400 group home residents to shared living in 12 months’ time. The House Finance Committee agreed with her subsequent request to restore $10.2 million of that total. 

The prospects of achieving even $6.4 million in savings are not strong if the efforts of the past six months are any indication.  What BHDDH director  Montanaro describes as a “full court press” to increase the number of shared living arrangements in the second half of the current fiscal year has yielded results that are about the same as the first half. There were 11 new shared living arrangements from July to December of 2015 and 10 new placements since January.

The governor’s budget proposal called for $3.5 million in group home savings during the current fiscal year with 100 new shared living arrangements,  but the actual savings will be more like $200,000, Montanaro told the Senate Finance Committee at the end of April.  

The House Finance Committee’s recommended budget acknowledges this development by adding $3.5 million back into to the department’s supplemental appropriation for the current fiscal period, which ends June 30. 

While approving major elements of the governor’s developmental disabilities budget proposal, the House Finance Committee rejected a $5.8-million request to cover an estimated caseload increase of 100 in the coming fiscal year, saying that the developmental disability caseload has been stable at about 4,000. 

Yet there is a backlog of about 240 individuals who have applied for an eligibility determination, according to a BHDDH spokeswoman. Two thirds of them are under the age of 21, according to another BHDDH official. That would mean that roughly 80 are over 21.   

And the numbers of young adults with developmental disabilities who are turning 21 and leaving school - 74 in the current academic year alone – suggest that the caseload should be growing. 

Persons with developmental disabilities between the ages of 14 and 21, who are at risk of segregation as adults, are one of the main concerns of the U.S. Department of Justice in enforcing a 2014 consent decree requiring community-based adult services, with an emphasis on supported employment. 

The consent decree, in effect until Jan. 1, 2024, resulted from a DOJ investigation that found the state’s sheltered workshops and segregated day centers for adults with disabilities violated the integration mandate of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), which was clarified in the 1999 Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.. 

In a hearing in April in U.S. District Court, the DOJ presented evidence that BHDDH does not determine eligibility until a few months before an applicant turns 21. 

State law says that persons with developmental or intellectual disabilities are eligible for services when they turn 18. 

Newly eligible young adults and their families often have trouble finding appropriate services, according to the evidence presented in court.  

Many of the two dozen private service providers in the state are not accepting new clients because they say they are operating at a deficit.  Montanaro has confirmed that assertion, telling the House Finance Committee recently that the private agencies have opened their books to BHDDH. 

With the federal court case continuing under terms of a judge’s order, there is likely to be pressure on the state to make sure that all applicants for adult services get timely consideration and an appropriate array of supports, a factor that could push up the caseload numbers. 

In its budget recommendation, the House Finance Committee said it would reconsider its refusal of a caseload increase if the numbers do go up. 

It is possible that decision was at least partly influenced by frustration in the House leadership with a history of poor record-keeping at BHDDH, something that also has worked against the department in the U.S. District Court case. 

The House Finance budget added extensive language requiring BHDDH to report monthly on a variety of statistics, including everything submitted to the court as part of the consent decree requirements. 

After the court experienced delays in getting an accurate count of individuals protected by the consent decree, Judge John J. McConnell issued an order May 18 that requires the state “to create a live database that will allow for efficient and effective tracking of each member of each target population outlined in the Consent Decree and all related and required services and outcomes.” The order then describes all the reporting requirements in extensive detail. 

In all, the order contains 22 requirements, most of them with deadlines in July and August. In the event of a violation of any part of the order, the DOJ or an independent court monitor in the case could ask McConnell for a show-cause hearing as to why the state should not be held in contempt. Fines start at $1,000 a day and max out at a total of $1 million for the year.

The first requirement of the order is that “the State will appropriate the additional money contained in the Governor’s budget for fiscal year 2017 in order to fund compliance with the Consent Decree.” No dollar amount is cited.  

RI Governor's New Request for More DD Funding To Go Before House Finance Committee Thursday

By Gina Macris

Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo has proposed adding nearly $16.9 million in state and federal revenue funds during the next fiscal year to shore up the state’s developmental disability system, which is under a federal court order to expand participation of adults with intellectual challenges in work and leisure activities in their communities to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). 

The addition of these funds, in four disability-related categories, will be heard by the House Finance Committee May 26, along with dozens of other proposed amendments Raimondo submitted in light of positive revenue estimates made a few weeks ago by state fiscal analysts. 

The new revenue reflects a change in the Governor’s approach to budgeting for developmental disability reforms, which originally depended on cost-shifting within the Division of Disabilities in the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH).

The disability-related amendments are:

•  An additional $4 million - about equally divided between state and federal funds – to raise the wages of some 4,000 direct care workers for private agencies that provide most of the services to adults with developmental disabilities. The amendment would raise the total allocation for worker raises from $5 million to $9 million.

• A $10 million increase in reimbursements to private providers, including $5 million in additional state revenue, to restore most of the cuts in housing costs made in the Governor’s original budget. That proposal projected 500 adults with developmental disabilities would move from group homes to shared living arrangements with individual families by June 30, 2017, although those estimates were later lowered to 300.  A total of 21 individuals have moved during the current fiscal year, according to the latest figures released by BHDDH. The added revenue will enable BHDDH to take a “more appropriate, more deliberative approach to transition individuals from group homes to shared living arrangements” in the future, according to Michael Raia, a spokesman for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services.

• A total of $170,000 in state and federal funding for an ombudsman who would protect the rights of adults with developmental disabilities. Legislation has been introduced in both the House and Senate to define the office and its duties, in response to the death of a resident of a state-run group home in February.

• Restoration of $4.4 million in state and federal funds used to pay for professional services like physical therapy in day centers, In February, the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) sought to shift the entire $2.2 million to Medicaid managed care organizations, but families complained that services had in fact been denied. The action was rescinded in March.

One of many provisions of a U.S. District Court order issued by Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. on May 18 is that “the State will appropriate the additional money contained in the Governor’s budget for fiscal year 2017 in order to fund compliance with the Consent Decree.” 

Any violation of that or any other requirement in the 21-point court order would allow the U.S. Department of Justice or the independent court monitor in the case to ask the judge for a contempt hearing. If the state is found in contempt, it will be fined a minimum of $5,000 a day for the duration of the violation, up to $1 million a year. 

In a telephone interview May 25, BHDDH director Maria Montanaro emphasized the need for the total $9 million Governor Raimondo has earmarked for wage hikes for direct care staff in the private service system, in addition to the other adjustments.  

Part of what the court wants is a redesign of reimbursement rates, which is more complicated than only raising wages, Montanaro said. The changes in reimbursement that the judge wants, however, can’t be accomplished without paying the workers more, she said. 

Raimondo’s budget originally envisioned an increase of $5 million in state and federal funds to pay for a 45-cent hourly wage increase for a workforce now making an average of roughly $11.50 an hour, according to testimony in recent House and Senate committee hearings. 

Montanaro could not say exactly how the additional $4 million in federal and state funds would further affect wages, but it would allow BHDDH management and agency representatives to discuss factors like the salaries of supervisors of direct care staff and the cost of employer taxes and benefits, she said. Those discussions would be held after the budget is adopted, she said. 

 Currently, private agencies are not fully reimbursed for those employer costs, spokesmen for the service providers have testified at recent budget hearings, and they operate at loss for each person they employ.