RI Proposes DD Action Plan To Avoid Contempt Of Court

By Gina Macris

The state of Rhode Island would raise the pay of caregivers for adults with developmental disabilities to $20 by mid-2023 as part of an “action plan” submitted Tuesday, Oct. 19, to fend off a contempt hearing in federal court over continued violations of a 2014 consent decree mandating the integration of this population in their communities.

The contempt hearing, which had been scheduled to begin Oct. 18 and run through Oct. 22, was canceled last week without explanation by Chief Judge John J. McConnell, Jr., of the U.S. District Court. There previously had been indications the state was working on a settlement proposal.

The action plan also promised that workers would get an interim raise, from $15.75 an hour to $18 an hour, to take effect July 1, 2022, as well as the development of an “intensive” and coordinated statewide initiative involving the Department of Labor and Training, the Community College of Rhode Island, and other organizations to recruit and retain skilled candidates to fill gaps in the workforce necessary to support adults with developmental disabilities who want to be integrated into their communities.

In addition, a total of $12 million would be set aside for a “transformation fund” aimed at supporting private service providers as they go through the first two parts of a three-part transition period from a system originally framed around segregated group care to one that promotes individualized services in the community. Of the $12 million total, $2 million would be reserved to help families who self-direct their own programs, essentially acting as independent employers and program directors for staff serving individual loved ones.

The remaining $10 million would be divided into grants to enable provider agencies to begin shifting to integrated services during the next 12 months, with provisions for considering more funding to expand program innovations during a third phase.

In addition, the action plan commits the state to setting aside $2 million to help adults with intellectual and developmental challenges acquire technology. While smartphones and tablets have become ubiquitous, many adults with developmental disabilities do not have access to the internet.

Overall, the plan appears to conform to several orders issued by McConnell since the summer of 2020 to bring the state into compliance with the consent decree.

A permanent budgetary, operational, and bureaucratic framework for a new developmental disabilities system would emerge from a rate review study that is expected to begin in coming weeks. The Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals, (BHDDH) plans to award the contract by Nov. 1. BHDDH originally required the work to be done in six months, but the action plan said the deadline will be December 1, 2022, a little more than a year from now.

The governor’s budget proposal for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2022 (Fiscal Year 23) “will recognize” preliminary recommendations of the rate review consultants, and “the State will work in good faith to incorporate the reasonable recommendations set forth in the final rate review project” in the governor’s following budget proposal for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2023 (Fiscal Year 24), the action plan says.

Because the state needs to expand the workforce and hike wages to deliver on the individualized, community-based supports required by the consent decree, reforms are expected to require a significant financial commitment by the General Assembly.

The upcoming rate review would add dollars and cents to the picture and include recommendations for reimbursement models that would stabilize the finances of provider agencies. Providers say the current fee-for-service model does not pay their actual costs, including free care often given to individuals while the agencies appeal service cuts.

The monetary changes and any new provider reimbursement model would have to be approved by the General Assembly. To move forward, the action plan also needs approval from the U.S. Department of Justice and the court..

To read the state’s action plan, click here.

RI DD Providers Agree to $15.75 Hourly Rate; Hike May Not Address Worker Shortage

By Gina Macris

Private agencies serving adults with developmental disabilities have asked for an additional $31 million in the next Rhode Island state budget to offer workers about $17.50 an hour – a bump of more than $4 on the current starting hourly pay.

The $31 million in state revenue would generate an additional $48 million in federal funds under the Medicaid program, for a total of $79 million. The private service system is currently funded at $260.4 million in federal-state Medicaid money.

A trade association of providers says its members need a significant wage hike to begin filling a huge hole in the workforce needed to implement a 2014 consent decree aimed at correcting violations of the civil rights of adults with developmental disabilities.

The state, meanwhile, has offered an estimated hourly pay of $15.75 for direct care workers.

Providers have agreed to the state’s figure, a bump of $2.57 over the current average starting pay of $13.18, as well as to an hourly rate of $21.99 for supervisory personnel. It was not immediately clear how much of a raise the supervisors are to receive.

But the providers, represented by the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island, say they are concerned that the state’s proposal will have little, if any, effect on their attempts to chip away at the worker shortage.

These latest developments in negotiations involving state officials, providers, families running independent support programs for loved ones, and other stakeholders emerged primarily in a budget briefing for the House Finance Committee June 3 and in a separate June 4 report to the federal court from an independent monitor.

The monitor, A. Anthony Antosh, said the consent decree requires the state not only to make certain reforms but to maintain the capacity to carry them out on a continuing basis. The worker shortage, the equivalent of about 1,081 full time positions, means the state lacks that capacity, Antosh said.

FERLAND

In the June 3 budget briefing, the House Fiscal Advisor, Sharon Reynolds Ferland, told the finance committee about the providers’ $31 million request but offered few details as she described the many moving parts of the state’s overall spending plan for Fiscal 2022, which begins July 1, in less than four weeks.

She said that the $31 million was not a negotiated figure or “anything other than what was asked” by provider agencies

Ferland told the finance committee that the proposed privatization of the state-run group home system is off the table, evaporating an estimated $20 million in savings that the administration had written into the budget.

The privatization depended on the existing network of private agencies – the same ones with the 1,000 worker shortage - to take on some 116 residents of the state-run group home system, without an increase in private-sector pay.

Ferland said that “was not something they (private providers) could support, or handle.”

The state pays its group home workers about $5 more an hour than it allows for frontline caregivers in privately-run homes.

In offering wage increases, the state withdrew all funds that previously had been earmarked for transition and transformation of the service system from a model based on segregated care to one that puts people in their communities.

Antosh

Antosh was not pleased, saying that “it is critical that the State provide transformation and innovation funds in FY 2022,” the fiscal year that begins July 1.

Antosh noted in several places in the report that there has been no discussion of wages or system reform for 2023 or 2024 – the last two years of the consent decree.

He recommended that the state meet with providers and other stakeholders once a week until they reach an agreement on wages for 2022 and 2023 and complete a comprehensive review of the rate structure that governs reimbursement to private providers.

The current rate structure is a dizzying array of dozens of figures and codes, with some rates presented in 15-minute increments of service for each client in the care of a single staff person. For example, providers must enter 20 fifteen-minute service units to get paid for one staffer working with five persons for an hour during the day, according to the current reimbursement methodology.

The state has agreed in principle that the rate structure should be simplified and initially told Antosh it would be done during the next fiscal year, the monitor said. More recently, he said, the state informed him the new rate structure would not be fully fleshed out until 2024.

He recommended that the new rate structure be completed in time for the governor to include it in his budget proposal for the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2023.

Often in the last year, Antosh’s recommendations to Judge McConnell have been transformed into court orders, with the judge becoming increasingly specific on the way he wants the state to address particular issues.

McConnell

For example, to attract high-quality job applicants, McConnell issued an order in January saying the state must increase wages to $20 an hour by 2024. Shortly after that, legislative leaders withdrew their representatives from ongoing talks among officials of the executive branch, the private providers, family members, individuals who receive services, and other advocates.

Spokesmen for the House and Senate said at the time that the General Assembly would deal with compliance issues as part of the legislative process.

Governor McKee’s initial budget proposal included no pay increase for direct care workers or supervisors.

And in a budget hearing June 2 for members of the finance committee’s human services subcommittee, Ferland said some of the court orders, like the one dealing with wages, appear to go “beyond” the consent decree. She did not explain the worker shortage or any other context for McConnell’s order on wages.

The instability of the labor force existed well before the pandemic. According to a detailed analysis commissioned by service providers, before the pandemic the private system had filled the equivalent of 2088 of the 2845 fulltime positions it needed to serve people in the community as the consent decree required, leaving 757 vacancies.

COVID made the situation worse, with the number of vacancies increasing by 324, for a total of 1,081, the consultants, the Approach Group, told Judge McConnell in a report delivered in April.

As a means of ensuring consistent funding on the basis of the latest data available, McConnell has ordered that the developmental disabilities caseload be incorporated into the Caseload Estimating Conference by November of this year.

The twice-yearly caseload estimating and revenue estimating conferences are used in budget preparations both by the executive and legislative branches.

The governor has proposed that the developmental disabilities caseload into the Caseload Estimating Conference beginning in November, 2022.

But in his latest report, Antosh asked the judge to remind the state that the deadline for participation in November, 2021 was “a court order, not a request.” A spokesman for the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals said recently that the timing of the switch to the Caseload Estimating Conference was “under review.”

BHDDH has not explained exactly why the change could not be made in 2021 in accordance with the court order.

Another change from the court’s expectations is that there is no funding in the budget to switch from quarterly to annual budget authorizations for each person who receives services, according to Ferland’s June 2 presentation to the human services subcommittee of the finance committee.

The quarterly authorizations, applied to the existing fee-for-service model, mean that all clients must have 100 percent participation for all the funding to be used – a virtual impossibility. Because funding cannot be transferred from one quarter to another, the state counts on saving about $6.7 million a year from program absences.

The governor’s initial proposal for Fiscal 2022 added that money so that the funding matched the annual authorization for an entire year. Providers, those receiving services, and their families have long complained that the quarterly authorizations do not allow them any flexibility in planning individualized programs.

Read the monitor’s latest report.

Read the consultants’ report on the worker shortage.

Proposed $10M Cut In RI DD Spending Overshadows Reform Plans

By Gina Macris

Thursday’s initial briefing on Governor Daniel McKee’s proposed budget for adults with developmental disabilities highlighted a $15-million set-aside to plan changes in the system, in response to a federal court order enforcing a 2014 civil rights consent decree.

At the same time, the budget legislation submitted to the General Assembly later in the day, on March 11, shows that overall spending on developmental disabilities would be $10 million less than spent this year.

McKee proposes adding $476,573 to the current developmental disabilities allocation for a total of nearly $304.5 million in federal and state Medicaid money and miscellaneous other sources of funding to close out the current fiscal year June 30.

The budget bill for the next fiscal year cuts overall spending on developmental disabilities to $294.4 million. That total includes $5 million in federal funds and $10 million in state revenue earmarked in the budget for the $15-million “transformation and transition fund” to plan reforms to comply with the consent decree.

The spending cut reflects projected savings from phasing out the costly state-run group home system. Residents would be moved to less costly group homes run by private service providers, according to the budget plan.

But the private agencies, who were in a precarious financial position even before the onset of the COVID pandemic a year ago, have been reluctant to take on additional clients in recent years because the amount the state pays does not cover the actual cost of services, according to repeated testimony before House and Senate finance committees, as well as testimony in federal court.

The state’s own consultants, the non-profit New England States Consortium Systems Organization, highlighted the providers’ fiscal problems and the way the demands on them strained capacity as part of an exhaustive 18-month study completed last summer for the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH).

The core long-term problem, exacerbated by COVID-19, is an inability to find workers for jobs that carry a high degree of responsibility but provide an average starting wage of about $13.18 an hour, less than some fast food and retail chains and less than Amazon, according to testimony before Chief Judge John J. McConnell of the U.S. District Court.

McConnell, who enforces compliance with a 2014 civil rights decree requiring the integration of adults with developmental disabilities in their communities, has ordered the state to raise workers’ wages to $20 an hour by 2024 as part of a comprehensive three-year overhaul of the developmental disabilities system.

The state budget indirectly controls how much the private providers can pay their workers by setting reimbursement rates for various services, but no money in McKee’s proposal is carved out for a rate increase.

Nor does it appear the McKee administration anticipates the heightened level of spending in the next several years that would support the kind of investment needed to comply with requirements of the consent decree to accommodate clients’ desire to be part of their communities, at work and at play. The consent decree gets its authority from the Integration Mandate of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

McKee’s budget summary anticipates costs for developmental disabilities services will increase 4 percent annually through 2026.

A 4 percent annual increase would come nowhere close to fulfilling the court-ordered hourly wage of $20 an hour which, according to one estimate, would require an budget hike exceeding 45 percent.

The budget summary indicates the state aims to save a net $11.4 million by transferring the operations of the state-run group home system to the privately-run system by October 1.

The state-run system, called Rhode Island Community Living and Supports, (RICLAS) is currently allocated $29.7 million to care for 116 group home residents. The budget summary says transferring RICLAS operations to the private group home system would save $19.2 million in federal-state Medicaid funds in the RICLAS account in the fiscal year beginning July 1.

At the same time, a total of $7.8 million would be added to the private provider system to care for the former RICLAS residents. The budget for the next fiscal year would still leave about $9 million in RICLAS through June 20, 2022. A BHDDH spokesman could not immediately say how long the RICLAS phase-out would take.

The $19.2 million cut in RICLAS would eliminate the equivalent of 50 full-time jobs, mostly from attrition or transfer, the BHDDH spokesman said. RICLAS caregivers are paid a minimum of $18 and receive state employee benefits.

The last time BHDDH announced plans to move large numbers of people in residential care, in 2016, it achieved only a small fraction of the savings the Office of Management and Budget had calculated.

Of 100 persons projected to move from group homes to less costly shared living arrangements in private homes during the first six months of 2016, only 21 made successful matches with families.

Instead of projected savings of $19.3 million, the state recouped a few hundred thousand dollars in that six-month period.

Between March, 2016 and July, 2020, the number of people in shared living arrangements increased from 288 to 399. Since then, the number has decreased to 378, according to BHDDH figures.

The $15-million transformation and transition fund would support a policy and planning effort to carry out reforms required for compliance with the consent decree, according to the budget bill.

BHDDH informed Judge McConnell in February that the changes would take 18 to 24 months to implement, with a target date of December, 2022.

According to the budget language, the fund will be dedicated to:

• Help providers “strengthen” their operations to “support consumers’ needs for living meaningful lives of their choosing in the community”

• Allow providers the chance to participate in a performance-based payment model

• Reduce administrative burdens for providers

• Invest in “state infrastructure” to implement and manage these initiatives

• Prepare for a new way of approaching budgeting of the developmental disabilities caseload in the future.

Beyond the language in the budget bill, there were no details immediately available from BHDDH on what the transformation and transition fund will pay for.