Low RI Medicaid Rates Strain All Healthcare Services, Witnesses Say

By Gina Macris

Annette Bourbonniere

Without a personal care assistant, Annette Bourbonniere of Newport needs up to five hours each day to get herself dressed in the morning.

For the past year, she hasn’t been able to find regular help for a position that pays $15 an hour, the Rhode Island-approved Medicaid rate for the services she needs, unchanged for the last 18 years.

Not only is it impossible for her to engage in productive activity, Bourbonniere says, but “I worry every day how I am going to survive.”

Bourbonniere, seated in a high-backed power chair, was one of hundreds of people from all walks of life who converged on the Senate Finance Committee April 28 to hammer home the message that the state’s Medicaid program is broken.

The witnesses testified for a cluster of bills which, taken together, would stabilize Medicaid-funded services with one-time rate increases and set up a rate review process every two years, with a 24-member committee drawn from the community advising the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS). There is no estimate of the overall cost of the bills.

In a letter to the Senate Finance Committee, the Director of Administration, James E. Thorsen, and the acting Secretary of Health and Human Services, Ana P. Novais, indicated that the prospects for immediate changes appear gloomy.

Thorsen and Novais said there are 74,000 separate Medicaid rates in the state’s program, all of which cannot be revised in one year as the legislation requires. A rate review “of this magnitude” would take at least five years, they said.

They said the bill establishing a 24-member advisory committee for Medicaid rate review instead might be seen as “establishing policy and rate setting”, rather than advising EOHHS, the agency with the legal authority to set rates.

There is also an appearance of a conflict of interest in that the potential make-up of the committee includes members who would be recommending rates for other members of the same group, Thorsen said.

Support for Medicaid reform remains uncertain in the House, where Rep. Julie Casimiro, D-North Kingstown, has organized companion legislation adding up to a Medicaid overhaul..

At the outset of the hearing, State Sen. Ryan Pearson, D-Cumberland, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said the Senate has already made Medicaid reform one of its top priorities in the current session.

Louis DiPalma

The legislation was spearheaded by Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown, first vice president of the Senate Finance Committee, who received repeated praise from the speakers for his relentless focus on equity issues in the human services.

Dozens of witnesses told the committee that the reimbursement rates to community-based health and social service programs fall so far below costs that:

• Access is shrinking to out-patient services that can prevent costly hospitalizations and even life-threatening situations.

• Caregivers ranging from doctors and dentists to nursing assistants and personal assistants to those with disabilities are either leaving their fields or leaving the state.

• Hospitals are left to deal with more patients who have nowhere else to go, while they lean on private insurers for more money to fill the gap. In the end, those who buy private insurance must foot the bill for escalating premiums.

According to the testimony:

• Four hundred infants with special needs are waiting for early intervention services to which they are legally entitled.

• Nearly six hundred elderly are waiting for home care services that will prevent them from going into nursing homes.

• Almost 200 children and youth are waiting for psychiatric care, sometimes in hospital emergency rooms.

Sherrica Randle

At the hearing, Sherrica Randle said her 13-year-old daughter has been hospitalized three times in the last six months for behavioral issues. During the most recent episode, her daughter spent nearly two weeks in the emergency room of Newport Hospital for lack of a pediatric psychiatric bed at Bradley Hospital, Randle said.

Elsewhere, a teenage girl who had made a “serious” suicide attempt nevertheless had to wait four months for mental health services, according to Alexandra Hunt, clinical director of Tides Family Services.

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the labor shortage in front-line human services but many agencies have struggled for years to pay enough money to prevent workers from leaving the field, the witnesses said. Jamie Lehane, President and CEO of Newport Mental Health, said he had to sell a building a few years ago to continue making payroll and avoid a shut-down.

Like other community social service and home care agencies, providers of services for adults with developmental disabilities can’t get qualified personnel to work for Medicaid-approved rates, starting at $15 an hour.

These providers compete with retail and fast food chains, which pay more for jobs that are less demanding, said Casey Gartland, representing the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island, a trade association.

Unlike other sectors of the Medicaid program, services for adults with developmental disabilities are subject federal oversight because of a 2014 civil rights consent decree and several court orders, one of which requires the state to raise wages to $20 an hour by 2024.

The proposed budget of Governor Dan McKee would raise the wages of front line developmental disability workers to $18 an hour as an intermediate step on July 1.

But the most recent data about the workforce and inflation has prompted DiPalma to sponsor legislation that would raise the pay of developmental disability workers to $21 an hour on July 1. Rep. Evan Shanley, D-Warwick, has filed a companion bill in the House.

The Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals held a press conference in favor of that proposal just before the start of the hearing on Medicaid reform.

Doctors, dentists, and hospital executives testified in person and in writing that the state’s Medicaid program has a ripple effect on the healthcare of all Rhode Islanders.

The case of Women and Infants Hospital, where 80 percent of Rhode Island mothers give birth, illustrates that point.

Shannon Sullivan

Shannon Sullivan, President and CEO of Women and Infants, said it is the ninth largest stand-alone maternity hospital in the United States.

Nearly forty-five percent of its revenue comes from Medicaid Managed Care, which pays half of the Massachusetts managed care rate for obstetrical births, she said.

Simple math shows that the situation is unsustainable, she said. “This is not an issue that will go away, and it is not an issue that we have much time on,” Sullivan said.

Without Women and Infants, women experiencing difficulties in their pregnancies would have to go to Boston or New Haven to receive the same level of care, she said.

Gail Robbins, senior vice president of Care New England, the parent company of Women and Infants, said that because of low Medicaid rates, hospitals must put pressure on private insurers, whose rates are 200 to 300 percent more than Medicaid.

“It’s not a healthy bottom line,” Robbins said.

DiPalma said hospitals are not awash in cash. They absorb considerable costs in uncompensated care of uninsured patients, and must pay hefty licensing fees to the state, he said.

The Department of Administration and EOHHS support the programs funded by Medicaid and recognize the need for regular rate reviews, Thorsen and Novais said.

But “any changes to the rate setting process should be carefully measured and balanced to avoid significant negative funding impacts of other important programs such as education, public safety, and natural resources,” they said in their letter.he said.In their letter,

The state already spends 40 percent of its general revenue on human servicesm the two administrators said. By comparison, Massachusetts pays considerably more on the human services, up to 56 percent of its budget, according to DiPalma.

Others at the hearing saw the situation as a question of values.

Bourbonniere, a consultant on accessibility and inclusion, said she was dismayed when she attended an online meeting with EOHHS officials last fall and they said at the outset, with apparent pride, that Rhode Island has a lower Medicaid expenditure per person enrolled than the median in the United States.

For her and others going without services, “this was crushing,” she said in a letter to the committee.

Paying personal care assistants and other essential workers a living wage contributes to the state’s economy in the goods, services, and taxes they pay and the businesses they support, Bourbonniere said.

These essential workers also enable people with disabilities to earn a living. “Isn’t that better than the current investment in maintaining poverty,” she said.

The bills heard April 28 are:

• S2200- provides a rate-setting review every two years for all medical and human service programs licensed by the state or having a contract with the state, including those funded by the federal-state Medicaid program.

• S2306 - provides one-time increases to base rates in the Medicaid program for home care services

• s2648 - funds pass-through wage increases to those who work in long-term care in the community with $17.7 million in the established “Perry-Sullivan” law, rather than allowing the governor to use one-time funding from the American Rescue Plan in the next budget. Proponents say the state could be penalized by the federal government from using ARPA to replace or “supplant” existing funds.

• S2311 - provides for a 24-member advisory committee to EEOHS for the rate-setting process

• S2546 - provides for one-time Medicaid rate increases to early intervention and outreach programs for young children with special needs.

• S2588 - provides one-time increases to Medicaid rates for dental services and includes chiropractic care for the first time in the Medicad program.

• S2598 - increases the daily reimbursement rate to nursing homes by 20 percent for single-occupancy rooms with private bathrooms.

• S2884 - Provides a substantial increase to the Medicaid managed care rate for hospital births

• S2597 - eliminates the need for annual eligibility review for the eligible for the federal Katie Beckett program for children with disabilities, as long as a doctor says their condition is unlikely to change. the bill also allows families of eligible children to request additional service hours.

  All photos from Capitol TV

RI State Budget Advances; DD Forum Thursday

By Gina Macris

The Rhode Island Senate Finance Committee will hold a hearing Wednesday, June 30, and is expected to vote on the $13.1 billion state budget for the next fiscal year – including language which sets aside $39.7 million for raises for caregivers of adults with developmental disabilities and their supervisors.

The new fiscal year begins just hours after the expected vote, on Thursday, July 1. The full Senate could act as early as July 1, sending the state’s annual revenue and spending plan to Governor Dan McKee for his signature. Historically, there has been little change to the budget once it clears the House and goes to the Senate.

The public may submit written testimony to the Senate Finance Committee prior to 2 p.m. Wednesday, the starting time for the public hearing. Email the testimony to jplume@rilegislature.gov

the meeting will be will be streamed live online through Capitol TV.

The raises for entry-level workers, from $13.18 to an estimated $15.75 per hour, take effect July 1, but it’s not clear when direct care staff will see them in their paychecks. Supervisory rates are expected to increase from $18.41 to $21.99 an hour.

Tina Spears, executive director of the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island, said earlier this week, “We are working hard to ensure the system is ready on July 1 so we can get the raises out the door in July.”

BHDDH has not yet responded to a query about the timeline in incorporating the higher rates in reimbursements to the service providers.

Richard Charest

On July 1 from 3 to 5 p.m., Richard Charest, the new director of the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals, (BHDDH) will participate in a virtual quarterly forum of the Division of Developmental Disabilities.

Charest, former President and CEO at the Landmark Medical Center and more recently, a consultant to the troubled Eleanor Slater Hospital, is the fourth BHDDH director in the last six years.

Advocates in Action will host the online forum on behalf of the Division of Developmental Disabilities. To pre-register, go to : https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/8416222159110/WN_0bzY-PPUSLOwu_ad3Ldhzw

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.”

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.”

RI Senate Finance Hearing Highlights Cost Overruns, Challenges, in DD Budgets

By Gina Macris 

Cost overruns are a recurring theme for Rhode Island’s Division of Developmental Disabilities, with expenses for mandated services running  about $4.4 million over budget in the current fiscal year, while $6 million in projected savings group home-related costs  are proving elusive. 

Overall, Governor Gina Raimondo seeks to close out the current fiscal year with a total of $250.6 million in developmental disabilities funding and requests $256.7 million for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Taken together, the $4.4 million increase she has requested in current spending and the proposed increase of nearly $6.1 million for the next fiscal year run almost $10.5 million more than the existing budget authorized by the General Assembly - $246.2 million.   

At a budget hearing April 4, members of the Senate Finance Committee seemed to understand the challenges faced by the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH), but Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown, still asked officials for more realistic budget figures in the future.

One case in point was $100,000 in actual savings in costs related to group homes, rather than the $2.6 million cut in state revenue that originally had been projected during the current fiscal year. 

The savings are associated with a shift in residential care from group homes to less costly shared living arrangements in private homes scattered throughout the state, a change that is driven both by budgetary constraints and federal Medicaid rules.

In April of 2016, BHDDH said it would move a total of 100 individuals with developmental disabilities from group homes to shared living by the end of the fiscal year June 30, but it achieved only 27 transfers, DiPalma said. 

For the current fiscal year, the goal is 66 moves. Noting the $2.5 million gap between projected and actual savings, DiPalma said he would have recommended a target of 45 transfers. 

But “the budget is what it is,” he said.

“If you want to move someone, they have to say yes,” DiPalma said. “If they say no, they stay where they are.”

Rebecca Boss, the acting BHDDH director, said, “you are right about the challenges.”

But she added that BHDDH already has 45 commitments from group home residents who have agreed to go into shared living.  

A year ago, the Division of Developmental Disabilities had not yet done a “deep dive” into the shared living program to understand what needed to be done to make it more attractive to consumers, Boss said.  She suggested that since then, officials have identified some issues that have prevented more rapid expansion of the program, but Boss was not specific.

Pressed for more details, she said they would be forthcoming in a month – May 5.  At last count in December, there were 333 residents in shared living arrangements and 1,283 in state or privately-run group homes, according to a Senate fiscal analysis. 

In the next budget, beginning July 1, BHDDH has proposed saving $3.9 million in state revenue related to movement out of group homes, but Boss said she could not guarantee that the department would meet its future budget targets. 

DiPalma also warned Boss that a similar transition away from group home care for children in state custody has shown that, for a time, residential costs actually increase because the state must maintain group housing while it builds its community-based network of home care.

A big part of the savings plan in the next fiscal year is to close a total of five group homes run directly by the state through Rhode Island Community Living and Supports (RICLAS), a division of BHDDH, including two in July, one in October, and two in January, 2018. 

Jim Cenerini, legislative affairs and political action coordinator for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 94, (AFSCME) expressed concern about the closures, which would move 30 residents, or 20 percent of the 150 people in the state-run system, into private care.

He said BHDDH officials have not talked about the closings with the union, which represents several hundred workers staffing the homes. 

Boss said BHDDH officials would be “more than happy” to sit down with the union.

Cenerini said, “We believe RICLAS provides a very vital service as a provider of last resort.”  He maintained that RICLAS residents are not ready to go to shared living arrangements. 

Two years ago, the union negotiated many cost-saving concessions with BHDDH that gave the department much more flexibility in staffing, but BHDDH hasn’t implemented any of the reforms except to hire seasonal workers who are ineligible for benefits, Cenerini said.

RICLAS workers are state employees, many of whom make at least double the poverty-level wages of workers in a parallel system of private agencies under contract with the state to provide most of the developmental disability services.

DiPalma told Cenerini that the “train has left the station” on the shift from congregate care to settings that are more like home. 

The change in Medicaid rules have been influenced by the 1999 Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that the Americans With Disabilities Act requires services for all people with disabilities to be available in the least restrictive environment that is therapeutically appropriate. That environment is presumed to be the community for both daytime and residential services.

“It’s up to us to figure out how to move those people into the community,” DiPalma said, and “how to facilitate the  workers at RICLAS to do other things.”  The conversation should not be about residents remaining in RICLAS homes “because this is what we have,” DiPalma said.

Cenerini emphasized that RICLAS offers continuity of care, something the private system lacks because of low wages and high turnover. “I don’t want to see the destruction of my union,” he said.

About 20 RICLAS workers also host adults with developmental disabilities in their homes as shared living providers, Cenerini said.

One reason BHDDH has a hard time meeting budget targets, Cenerini said, is that “they are asked to do so much with so little.”

Testimony at the hearing reiterated support for a $6 million wage increase in the fiscal year beginning July 1 for private-sector direct care workers, who now earn an average of about $11.14 an hour, according to the latest figures provided by Donna Martin, executive director of the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island. 

The current hourly average of $11.14 is only slightly higher than the federal poverty level of $9.82 an hour for a single parent household with two children, a profile that represents the typical direct care worker in developmental disability services, she said.

About one in three workers a year leave private agencies, many of them for slightly higher pay in a local market or to work at RICLAS, where they are paid an additional $5 an hour to do the same work, Martin said in written testimony she submitted to the committee.

The budget now in effect gave private-sector workers their first increase in a decade, putting an additional 36 cents an hour in their pockets, before taxes.  

DiPalma has sponsored a resolution that would increase the pay of these workers to $15 an hour in five years – the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2021. (In the House, State Rep. Teresa A. Tanzi has sponsored a similar resolution, which would achieve a $15 hourly rate in three years – by July 1, 2019.)

DiPalma’s and Tanzi’s resolutions also urge the legislature to link future annual raises to the consumer price index so that pay stays ahead of the minimum wage, currently $9.60 an hour. Governor Raimondo has proposed increasing the minimum wage to $10.50 on July 1.   The Senate Finance Committee held a separate hearing on wage increases May 21. (Click here to read related article.)

DiPalma highlighted another feature of the budget that seeks to add a total of $500,000, or $250,000 in state funds, to a supplemental allocation for developmental disability services that he said runs about $20 million to $22 million annually.

These supplemental funds are used when those receiving developmental disability services believe their individual budgets are inadequate and make a successful argument for more money, or when they need a short term boost in care triggered by events like a discharge from a hospital, according to Kerri Zanchi, Director of the Division of Developmental Disabilities.

DiPalma said he concurred with the use of funds to cover short-term extra needs, but he believed $22 million a year, or 10 percent of all service appropriations -  was too high for supplemental appropriations. 

 He called on BHDDH to change the equation that assigns individual funding.

Zanchi said the individual budgets are assigned on the basis of a standardized assessment of an individual’s need called the Supports Intensity Scale. In November, Rhode Island moved to an updated version of the assessment believed to be more accurate and began tracking the results to see if the number of appeals decline in the long run.

DiPalma noted that the current arrangement favors those who have the strongest advocates on their behalf.

Another hearing on budget is scheduled before a subcommittee of the House Finance Committee on Tuesday, April 11, in Room 35 of the State House at the conclusion of that day’s full House session. 

Low Wages Create Labor Shortage in RI DD Services; Advocates Testify for Higher Pay

By Gina Macris

Low wages for workers who provide direct care for adults with disabilities in Rhode Island have led to such a crisis that some agencies lose 80 percent of their front-line staff within six months, although the average annual turnover rate is 33 percent.

To fill the gap, their employers spend millions of dollars in overtime and in training new hires, only to lose them again.

Advocates for the developmental disability service system spelled out the consequences of poverty-level wages for direct care workers during a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee March 21.

A Rhode Island College expert submitted written testimony which said that an underpaid workforce results in instability, anxiety, and a diminished quality of life in the people it serves. 

The new developmental disabilities director, Kerri Zanchi, also linked the stability of the workforce to the quality of services and outcomes for the people it serves. 

Governor Gina Raimondo has proposed adding $6.1 million for raises to direct care workers in the budget beginning July 1. If it passes, it would provide the second annual raise –albeit a modest one – for some 4,000 part-time and full-time caregivers.

The first raise was enacted under pressure from federal enforcement of a 2014 consent decree. The $5-million line item added about 36 cents an hour for front-line caregivers, giving them an average of $11.18 an hour retroactive to July 1, 2016, according to Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown, the first vice-chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

DiPalma is leading a drive to increase the average wage for direct care workers and home health care workers to $15 an hour by July 1, 2021. Testimony during the hearing indicated that Massachusetts is on track to reach that goal in 2018.

DiPalma also noted that Rhode Island’s minimum wage rose 30 percent between 2012 and 2016, from $7.40 an hour to the current $9.60 an hour, while the average pay for direct care workers increased 1.6 percent during the same period.

Governor Raimondo is seeking a 90-cent increase in the minimum wage, or $10.50 an hour, for the fiscal year that begins July 1.  

The interstate disparity in wages, compounded by the fact that many Rhode Island residents can just as easily work in Massachusetts as in their home state, puts the developmental disability system at a distinct disadvantage in competing for employees.

Rhode Island’s system is “economically inefficient,” said Jim Parisi, spokesman for the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals, who represents workers at Trudeau Memorial Center, one of about three dozen private developmental disability service providers in the state.

Donna Martin, director of the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island (CPNRI), said that an average of about 16 percent of jobs go unfilled, forcing employers to use overtime to fill vacant shifts, particularly in situations where safety requires a certain minimum level of staffing.

In some agencies the job vacancy rate is as high as 25 percent, according to Rebecca Boss, the acting director of the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals.

Martin, meanwhile, said reports from 18 of the 25 CPNRI member organizations indicate they spend a $2 million a year on overtime, suggesting that the total statewide could be higher. Turnover, which includes training new hires, costs an average of about $4900 per person, she said.

A raise this year is expected to be slightly bigger than the average of about 36 cents an hour enacted in the current year. The exact amount is difficult to calculate in advance because the rate the state pays providers reflects wages and some, but not all, overhead costs, Martin said. And overhead costs vary from one provider to another.

The workforce crisis is the biggest single issue her membership faces, Martin noted.  Data she submitted to the committee indicated that the demand for staffers who provide direct support of adults with developmental disabilities is expected to grow 38 percent by 2022.

In written testimony, A. Anthony Antosh, director of the Sherlock Center on Disabilities at Rhode Island College, linked the labor shortage to a diminished quality of service for individuals with disabilities – an issue which is at the center of ongoing enforcement efforts of the 2014 federal consent decree.

With some agencies losing more than 80 percent of new hires within six months, Antosh said, workers cite low pay and the complexity of the work as the chief reasons they leave. They must work two or three jobs simply to make ends meet, he said.

A growing body of research documents that a stable, high quality direct support staff produces positive results in the population it supports. Those benefits include “increased personal competence, increased employment, increased social networks and social capital and increased satisfaction with life,” Antosh wrote.

“A direct support workforce destabilized by low wages, limited opportunities for professional development and a lack of a career ladder results in instability and anxiety in the lives of the people they support,” Antosh said.

Those who depend on services have “decreased opportunities for community connection, decreased employment, and a general decrease in quality of service,” Antosh said.

Quality service, with access to community-based employment and non-work activities, are a key goal of the 2014 consent decree and a subsequent court order, which aim to enforce the 1999 Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.

That ruling re-affirmed Title II of the Americans With Disabilities Act, which says that individuals with disabilities are entitled to receive services in the least restrictive environment that is therapeutically appropriate.The decision presumes that the community is the least restrictive environment. 

At right are submitted to the the Senate Finance Committee March 22 by the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island, a trade association of 25 private agencies that provide services to adults with developmental disabilities. In the graphic, DSP stands for "Direct Support Professional," the title given to front-line workers. The average hourly wage does not include raises enacted  that took effect July 1, 2016.  

Governor's Budget Would Add Total of $10 million For Developmental Disabilities Through June, 2018

By Gina Macris

A new $6.8-million incentive program, intended to encourage service providers to help Rhode Islanders with developmental disabilities get and keep jobs, will become a permanent fixture of the annual budget, according to Jennifer Wood, Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services.

That is one of several areas of Governor Gina Raimondo’s budget proposal that indicates the state is moving to increase services for individuals with developmental disabilities in keeping with a 2014 consent decree, which requires Rhode Island to expand their access to employment and other community activity over a ten-year period.  

Wood and other key officials, who are involved in reinventing the state’s developmental disability service system, elaborated on Raimondo’s proposed budget and the way it reflects evolving trends and programs during an hour-long interview with Developmental Disability News on Jan. 24. 

Between now and the end of the next fiscal year, which concludes June 30, 2018, Raimondo proposes to increase spending for developmental disability services by about $10 million, excluding restricted funds and capital expenses.

Of that total, $6 million in federal and state Medicaid funds would be used for five-percent increases to the average wages of direct support workers, and much of the rest would reflect more expensive levels of services needed by individuals with developmental disabilities than have been recognized in the past.

Overall, Raimondo asked the General Assembly to increase the current allocation for developmental disability services by nearly $4.4 million in this fiscal year, which ends in June, from about $246.2 million to $250.6 million.

Excluding restricted and capital accounts, the added amount available for services before June 30 would be nearly $3.8 million, according to a budget breakdown provided by EOHHS. In the budget cycle which ends in June, 2018, the Governor would add a total of about about $6.1 million, for $256.7 million in all spending on developmental disability services. Excluding the restricted and capital funds, the increase would be about $6.6 million.  

All Funds vs Operating Budget

TABLE COURTESY OF EOHHS

    GR=state funds     FF= federal funds

The primary reasons that developmental disability services are expected to be more costly include:

•  The need for a better-paid, more stable workforce, funded with a 5 percent increases in direct care wages, or a total of $6 million 

• · Additional staff time spent on job hunting and job support for their clients, reflected in the new $6.8 million individualized supported employment program that is already part of approved spending

• A new version of the process for assessing individual needs appears to indicate that more supports are required than have been recognized in the past.

Supported Employment Program Has Begun Operations

Until now, all individuals with developmental disabilities who sought help in finding jobs in the community had to give up other kinds of services, with the dollar value of their personal funding authorizations remaining the same. But those enrolled in the new “person-centered” supported employment program, now accepting applicants, will get job support in addition to their other services, according to an EOHHS spokeswoman. The program is expected to involve about 200 clients.

The supported employment program was funded by the General Assembly with a $6.8 million allocation for the current fiscal year. But that sum has been untouched while the state has figured out how the program will work.

The program is poised to make its first disbursements to service providers, including incentive payments for the placement of two individuals in jobs in January. said Tracey Cunningham, Chief Employment Specialist in the Division of Disabilities at the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH).

The original $6.8 million allocation is expected to fund the incentive program into the second half of the fiscal year ending in June, 2018, according to an EOHHS spokeswoman.

The program staff will evaluate the results of the first operational year to determine how much money it will need to continue, said Brian Gosselin, the Chief Strategy Officer at EOHHS. Wood promised assured continuous funding for the program.

“What we hope to learn in the first 12 months of this brand new program is what impact $6.8 million will have,” Gosselin said. It provides one-time incentive payments when staff complete a specific training program and clients are placed in jobs. The program also pays bonuses for employment retention, in two installments, after 90 and 180 days.  

Gosselin said he and his colleagues will determine whether the $6.8 million allocation was enough and will identify the successful features of the program that can be used in the second year.

He and Wood were asked why the 22 providers participating in the program must continue to use a fee-for-service reimbursement model which requires them to bill for daytime services in 15-minute increments.

Gosselin said that is the funding model that the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services has approved for daytime developmental disability services in Rhode Island.

“In order to make any adjustments to that methodology we would have to go through a very long approval process with the federal government,” he said.

But he emphasized that the new performance-based aspect of the incentive program is “what we hope to learn from.”

A discussion of the fee-for-service model and whether it works for Rhode Island is part of a larger conversation – redesigning and renewing the state’s Medicaid waiver, which is expected to occur in 2018, Gosselin said.

Wood emphasized that she didn’t want to conflate two things. “One is Medicaid billing” and the other is “programmatic contracting,” she said.

“What we set forth to do was to create the first instance in Rhode Island of performance-based contracting for outcome-based services provided to individuals with developmental disabilities. We are super-excited about that,” she said. “That’s a whole new direction for this world.”

Wood also elaborated on the design and roll-out of supported employment in the context of a U.S. District Court order reinforcing the 2014 consent decree, which had set an Aug. 1 deadline for implementation of the performance-based supported employment program.

“Implementation is an ongoing activity,” Wood said. “We met the requirements of the Court order by filing with the monitor and the Court and the DOJ (U.S. Department of Justice) the programmatic requirements” for the supported employment services program last summer, Wood said. The “person-centered” program is designed to put the needs and preferences of the client at the center of the job-hunting and support process.

Since the summer, state officials have met with providers, drawn up contracts and finalized them, she said. The next phase of implementation is enrolling clients, Wood said.

“We are actually quite proud of the fact that we can bring this program up in what in government circles is lightning speed,” she said, “and to do it in a really reliable, viable, and responsible way.”  .

“I know it may not appear that way to the public,” Wood said.  She apparently alluded to public criticism of the program, which was not completely fleshed out when it was first presented to providers in November and was not widely understood by families who direct individualized services for a loved one.

Wage Increase Intended to Help Stabilize Workforce

Governor Raimondo’s proposed $6 million for wage increases for direct care workers would provide about 5 percent more in the hourly rate, before taxes, in the fiscal year beginning July 1.

For the current fiscal year, the General Assembly approved about $5 million for a pay raise which boosted the average hourly rate from $10.82 to $11.18.   Another 5 percent would raise the average hourly rate by 56 cents to $11.74.

Governor Raimondo’s latest proposal also would provide an increase for employer-related costs for direct care workers, Wood said. 

Raimondo had been asked to include another pay increase for direct care workers in her budget plan from State Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown, First Vice Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

DiPalma said in a recent telephone interview that he considers Raimondo’s wage proposal for Fiscal 2018 the first step in a five-year effort to raise direct care salaries to $15 an hour.

In the meantime, the minimum wage may well be on the rise as well. The Governor’s budget proposal would increase it from $9.60 to $10.50, while Rep. Leonidas P. Raptakis, (D- Coventry, West Greenwich, and East Greenwich) has countered with a $10 minimum wage bill.

 DiPalma was asked whether a $15 hourly rate would be enough for the direct care workers in five years.

He said he plans to introduce legislation this year to link the wages of direct care workers to the consumer price index.

“We can’t tie the hands of future legislatures,” by committing them to specific dollar amounts in advance, DiPalma said.

“It’s a case of wanting people to have an appreciation for the intent of what we want to do” in placing value on the work of those who care for some of the state’s most vulnerable citizens, he said.  

A spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services said DiPalma and Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed, who backs the so-called “15 in 5” plan, “have been important partners in advocating for investments in our direct care workforce.”

“We look forward to working with our partners in the General Assembly to implement our second wage increase this year, as well as increases over multiple years as possible,” said the spokeswoman, Sophie O'Connell.

A year ago, a conference hosted by the Sherlock Center on Disabilities at Rhode Island College concluded that higher wages are a critical component in stabilizing the direct care workforce nationwide. In Rhode Island, the average annual turnover is about one third, according to the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island. That means that an adult with developmental disabilities, who relies on a good relationship with caregivers, can expect that every year, one out of every three staffers will  to the job.

Revised Individual Assessment Suggests Greater Cost

Unexpected  increases in billing from private service providers, as well as higher projections for future costs, would add an additional $5 million to federal and state-funded Medicaid-services for existing clients in the current fiscal year, according to the Governor's budget brief. (Some of that net increase would be offset by other savings.) 

In November, the Division of Developmental Disabilities began using an updated version of an assessment called the Supports Intensity Scale (SIS) in determining the needs of individual clients. Those assessments are used to assign individual funding authorizations for support services.

“I personally am really thrilled” over the implementation of the new version, called the SIS-A, Wood said. “I know all my colleagues in government feel the same way about it.”

She acknowledged that “there have been all sorts of questions in the past about the validity and reliability of the state’s approach to implementing the SIS.”

And it’s an emotional topic because it’s not just an evaluation, but one linked to funding supports for a loved one, she said.

Since the SIS was implemented in 2011, time-consuming appeals of the results and the corresponding funding levels have become common, and appeals were often granted.

In 2014, the DOJ criticized the way the SIS was being implemented in the findings that laid the groundwork for the consent decree.

“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,” the DOJ said at the time. 

In the recent interview, Wood said, “We feel much more comfortable and confident about the validity” of the SIS-A.

As it has been explained to her by the experts, she said, the new versions include refined questions that address some of the more complex needs that “people did not feel were being captured in the original version.”

Wood indicated that in general, higher scores on the SIS-A have  prompted developmental disability service officials to project higher individual funding authorizations. 

Apart from three new questions asking whether a client has hypertension, allergies or diabetes, the SIS-A adopts a risk assessment which includes five overarching questions with multiple parts intended to gauge critical health needs, self-injurious behavior or community safety issues. The questions on the risk assessment were released by the Division of Developmental Disabilities in the last week. Professionals say that with proper support, such risks can be overcome.

A lot of effort already has gone into retraining interviewers, Wood said, although “it will take us two to three years to find our way fully in this new assessment.”

Heather Mincey, social services administrator in the Division of Developmental Disabilities, said the training program has addressed the way interviewers ask questions. The Division of Developmental Disabilities is trying to be responsive to families, clients, and service providers who may not feel like they’re being heard or are unsure what kind of information the interviewer is trying to elicit, she said.

At the same, the Division of Developmental Disabilities is continuing an initiative begun a year ago to save about $1.7 million in Medicaid funding, including almost  $846,000 in state funds, from existing individual funding authorizations that exceed levels indicated in past SIS assessments.

There were so many complaints about the SIS in the latter part of 2014 and the first months of 2015 that BHDDH suspended an effort to rein in the exceptions in the fiscal year that ran from July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016.  But the initiative to  to reduce those exceptions resumed for the current fiscal year, which began last July.

Wood said that budget figures for the current fiscal year and the one ending June 30, 2018, twice listing $845,750 in savings from realignment of individual funding authorizations, don’t represent a new initiative, but a continuation of the one already underway.

The appeal process remains an option for those who disagree with their allocations.

A new policy enacted by the state last July to respond to a judicial order says that all SIS assessments will be based solely on support needs. It also says that only the Director of Developmental Disabilities has the authority to grant authorizations that exceed SIS levels. Until now, appeals have been decided by a team of administrators.

Wood and other state officials have said they hope the SIS-A will result in a reduction in the number of appeals.

RI Senate Leaders Launch Drive to Raise DD Workers' Pay to $15 in Next Five Years

By Gina Macris

DiPalma outlines Plan for $15 hourly wage in five years

Rhode Island Senate leaders have announced a five-year drive to lift wages of caregivers for adults with developmental disabilities to $15 an hour, with the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee saying Oct. 28 that the existing labor force is “so tenuous it is on the verge of collapse.” 

At a press conference in Warwick, Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown, the architect of the plan, said it would start with an additional $6.8 million in Medicaid funding – half of it state revenue- in the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2017. 

The plan also calls for legislation that would commit the state to additional wage increases in each of the following four fiscal years, although the total cost has yet to be determined, DiPalma said. 

The General Assembly added $5 million in Medicaid funding to the current budget late in the 2016 legislative session, under pressure from Governor Gina Raimondo and from a federal court order reinforcing a consent decree mandating integration of individuals with developmental disabilities. 

The U.S. Department of Justice and an independent court monitor had expressed concern that low salaries prevented service agencies from attracting workers with the necessary skills to implement the consent decree. 

The $5 million added to the current budget – including $2.5 million in state funds - raises the average worker’s hourly wage by 36 cents, from $10.82 to $11.18, according to DiPalma. The $6.8 million in the next budget would add another 76 cents, for a new average hourly rate of $11.94, he said. 

Similar yearly hikes would be needed during the following four years to reach $15 an hour, DiPalma said, although the increments do not have to be evenly divided as long as the state reaches the goal by July 1, 2021, the start of the 2022 fiscal year. 

He plans to introduce legislation in the next session of the General Assembly calling for raises over multiple years. 

The effort has the support of the Senate President, Teresa Paiva Weed, and the Senate Finance Committee Chairman, Daniel DaPonte. DiPalma is first vice-chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

 Late Friday, David Ortiz, press secretary to Governor Raimondo, said that while the current budget gave workers their first raise in several years, “we must do more to stay competitive with neighboring states. “ 

“The Governor looks forward to partnering with Senator DiPalma and Senate President Paiva Weed to continue to invest in better outcomes for families and help ensure all of our workers can make it in Rhode Island,” Ortiz said. 

Massachusetts has agreed to pay personal care attendants a minimum of $15 an hour by 2018.  Enacted in 2015, it was the first such state-wide agreement in the nation. 

New York recently adopted legislation spelling out a multi-year plan to phase in a $15 minimum wage for all workers, with different schedules for various regions of the state. 

In a statement in Warwick Friday, DaPonte said that DiPalma’s plan “addresses an important part of the wage inequity problem, and helps improve outcomes for the individuals they serve. 

“At the same time, we need to continue to review the methodology for compensating all those direct care workers who serve our children, homebound elderly, and individuals with disabilities through other types of provider agencies,” he said. 

During the press conference at West Bay Residential Services on Knight Street, DaPonte talked about a constituent who approached him at his son’s soccer game and complained that his recently-widowed, elderly mother was not receiving the 20 hours of home care to which she was entitled. 

The constituent wanted DaPonte to introduce legislation to require home health aides to show up on the job. 

But DaPonte said he told the man that the workers were so poorly paid the agencies “can’t find people to show up.” 

“Now we’re at the point where the system is so tenuous it’s on the verge of collapse,” he told an audience of about 50 that filled a conference room at the headquarters of the agency, which specializes in support for individuals with significant physical limitations.  

Data shows Pay Inequities, Particularly for Women

DiPalma’s plan emerged from a four-month long study that showed stark inequities in the pay of direct care workers since the General Assembly cut a total of $26 million from the developmental disability budget in the fiscal year that began July 1, 2011. 

With that sweeping action, workers saw double-digit pay cuts, to an average of $10.65 an hour, according to DiPalma’s data. At the time, the minimum wage was $3.25 lower, or $7.40 an hour. 

Since then, however, the state’s minimum wage has increased 30 percent, to $9.60 an hour, while the average pay of direct care workers has remained stagnant. 

In the fiscal year which ended June 30, Rhode Island’s direct care workers made an hourly average of $10.82 an hour, while those doing comparable work in Massachusetts were paid $13.02,  and those in Connecticut made $12.19, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor. 

The figures pertain to employees of private agencies providing direct care. In Rhode Island, a parallel, state-run system pays its entry-level workers $17.15 an hour, for an annual salary of $35,668. These workers also get thestate employee benefits package, according to DiPalma’s statistics.  

With longevity, the average direct care worker in the state system makes $42,278 a year, he said. 

DiPalma also presented the results of a 2015 survey of direct care workers conducted in 2015 by the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island, an association made up of most of some three dozen private agencies in Rhode Island that serve about 4000 adults with developmental disabilities. 

With 1,439 responses, the survey found that:

•  More than half the workers were female heads of households
• · Many received food stamps and other government assistance geared toward low-income workers
• ·87 percent worked fulltime
• ·41 percent worked more than one job to make ends meet
• · 62 percent said they want to leave the developmental disabilities field because of the low pay 

The turnover among employees of private agencies is 33 percent a year, three times the turnover rate of 11 percent in the parallel state-run system, according to DiPalma’s study. 

Higher wages would mean greater stability and improved performance in the workforce, DiPalma said. 

Picking up where DiPalma left off, the director of the Sherlock Center on Disabilities at Rhode Island College said research shows those two factors correlate with a better quality of life for the recipients of support services. 

Anthony Antosh said a better quality of life is measured by improved health and safety, more interpersonal relationships and greater self-determination among individuals with developmental disabilities. 

Jim Petrone works his communication board

Jim Petrone, who receives support from West Bay Residential Services, used a communication board to tell the audience that he could not have made it through a health crisis in 2015 without the support of his staff and family. 

“Now I have a second chance at life,” he said. 

Diane Scott, who has worked at West Bay Residential Services for 26 years, reminded the audience that those who provide direct care come to learn the most intimate details about a person’s life. 

“Imagine,” she said, “if staff showered you or bathed you.” 

“No sooner do you decide to trust these staff than they continue to leave. Regulars work extra hours to compensate for yet another staff vacancy,” Scott said. 

Antosh said direct care workers should be treated not as short-term custodial staff but as professionals, who are on a career ladder, and who provide comprehensive support to people with very complex needs.  

THREE-STATE COMPARISON OF MINIMUM WAGE AND HOURLY RATE FOR ATTENDANTS

CHART COURTESY OF RI SENATE 

Funding Shift in RI Developmental Disabilities Budget Falling Far Short of Goal

By Gina Macris

Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo’s strategy for funding federally-mandated reforms to developmental disability services is in trouble, according to updated figures that emerged in a Senate Finance committee hearing Tuesday. 

Raimondo’s proposed budget puts an overall price tag of $24.1 million on expanded community-based services funded through the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) over the next 14 months to satisfy a first-in-the-nation consent decree designed to correct violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

        MARIA MONTANARO

The BHDDH budget plan relies on a total of $19.3 million savings in group home costs to pay for most of that $24 million bill, but the actual savings are materializing at a trickle. BHDDH director Maria Montanaro told the Senate Finance Committee only $200,000 in reductions are expected by the end of the current fiscal year June 30.

The $200,000 savings comes from an increase of 21 individuals who have moved from costly group home care to less expensive shared living arrangements since the start of the current fiscal year July 1, 2015, a BHDDH spokeswoman said Wednesday. In the last ten months, the total number of individuals in shared living has risen from 267 to 288. BHDDH had projected 100 new additions to shared living by June 30 of this year and 200 more in the next budget.

The $200,000 in savings is less than a tenth of the $3.1 million in housing cost reductions that BHDDH had hoped to realize in the current budget. 

The figures raise big questions about a huge revenue gap in Raimondo’s plan, which is due for its next review in U.S. District Court Monday, May 2 at 1:30 p.m. before Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. The state faces contempt proceedings and fines if it fails to adequately finance supported employment and other community-based services as required by the consent decree.

On Tuesday, the gap between projected and actual savings in the BHDDH budget caught the attention of Sen. Louis DiPalma,  (D-Newport, Middletown, Tiverton and Little Compton), who chaired the hearing.

DiPalma questioned Montanaro sharply.

“What are we doing about achieving $16.2 million?” he asked Montanaro, referring to the lion’s share of the $19.3 million cut in group home costs that is projected for the next fiscal year. 

First Montanaro said it is possible BHDDH will meet the targeted $16.2 million in savings as more individuals move into shared living.

“The pace will be slow,” she said. Shared living is “a completely voluntary activity.” Families are making a decision about something that is “a new concept and a scary concept.”

“With that said, I believe the target for (fiscal) 2017 will be realistic,” Montanaro said.

The goal may be possible, DiPalma said, “but the probability is zero.”

Exacerbating the financial situation at BHDDH is the short-term failure of a plan to shift a total of $4.4 million in professional services like physical and occupational therapy out of the BHDDH budget to Medicaid Managed Care. After BHDDH officials sent out letters in February telling clients to seek reimbursement directly from Medicaid, the Division of Developmental Disabilities received numerous complaints that individuals were, in fact, being denied services.

BHDDH rescinded the move in a subsequent letter of apology sent to consumers and families, at the same time nullifying planned savings of $2.2 million through June 30. Christopher Feisthamel, chief financial officer of BHDDH, said after the hearing Tuesday that the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHSS) hopes to eliminate some of the bureaucratic hurdles that stand in the way of that cost-shifting during the next fiscal year. He could not be more specific.

DiPalma, meanwhile, indicated after Tuesday’s budget hearing that legislators will have a clearer idea of where BHDDH stands after the May revenue estimating conference, which concludes May 9. At the twice-yearly conference, the top fiscal officers for the governor and each legislative branch reach consensus on estimates for state revenue and caseload expenditures that are used in final budget deliberations.

Montanaro’s testimony put the shift toward shared living in a philosophical and budgetary context.

The single underlying principle of the Rhode Island consent decree and similar settlements in other states is that the “state should try very hard to move to the most inclusive, community-based system possible,” she said. Supported housing and shared living is part of that movement, she said.

“It’s not going to happen overnight,” Montanaro said.

At the same time, “we are faced with a targeted goal from OMB (the state Office of Management and Budget). There are very few places we can go to make those cuts,” Montanaro said.

Seven years of rate cuts to the private agencies that provide most of the developmental disability services in Rhode Island “have dramatically weakened the system,” she said. These funding reductions “have left clients very vulnerable.”

After a devastating cut of more than $24 million in the 2011-2012 fiscal year, the General Assembly has added a total of $18 million to the Division of Developmental Disabilities in succeeding budgets, but none of that money has reached the private service providers, according to Tom Kane, CEO of Access Point RI.

Instead, the money repeatedly has gone into plugging a structural hole in the BHDDH budget, he said.

Kane warned that if a $5.2 million supplemental increase to the current budget is not carried forward to the next fiscal year, the structural deficit will continue and the money Raimondo has set aside to shore up the private agencies will once again be diverted, threatening the stability of the entire service system. 

Earlier this month, Kane told a House Finance subcommittee that the private agencies operate at a loss of $5,700 a year for each person they employ, because the state does not cover the full amount of employer-related taxes and benefits.

On Tuesday, he indicated that said that if the agencies are forced to continue operating in the red, “there will be fewer of us next year.”

The General Assembly must “stabilize the system,” Kane said.