RI "Demanding Dignity" Campaign Backs $15 Minimum Wage For DD Caregivers In Two Years

RI State Rep. Evan Shanley, D-WARWICK, Left, and George Nee, President of the RI AFL-CIO At the State House Library *** photos by anne Peters

By Gina Macris

Rhode Island State Senator Louis DiPalma and Rep. Evan Shanley say they are introducing companion bills that would set a minimum wage of $15 an hour in two years for those who provide services to adults with developmental disabilities.

The bills were announced at a Feb. 27 State House press conference, hosted by George Nee, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, to kick off a union-backed campaign called “Demanding Dignity” to prioritize a living wage for caregivers in highly demanding jobs who are paid less than fast food workers or retail clerks.

Both Nee and DiPalma said there’s not a single legislator who doesn’t believe that direct care workers are underpaid and have been underpaid for years.

The bills would be costly – an estimated $25 million in state revenue over two years, according to DiPalma.

Nee said the “Demanding Dignity” campaign aims to make the $15 rate a priority for legislators.

The best way to accomplish that aim, Nee said, is to tell and retell the personal stories that convey the impact of the current wage structure on people’s lives.

For him, Nee said, the biggest take-away from the event was the story of Nancy Tumidajski, who works at the ARC of Blackstone Valley in Pawtucket. She said she was hired in 1991 at $10.25 an hour, then double the minimum wage. Today, 28 years later, she makes about two dollars more than that, she said.

By comparison, the minimum wage is currently $10.50 an hour. The average entry-level wage for direct care workers is $11.36 an hour, according to a trade association representing service providers.

Governor Gina Raimondo has proposed raises that would add about 44 cents an hour to workers’ paychecks at a total cost of $3 million in state revenue, that would be roughly doubled by the federal match in the Medicaid program.

L To R: Noelle Siravo, Nancy Tumidajski, Louis DiPalma

Tumidajski said her duties have included resuscitating a client who stopped breathing, performing the Heimlich maneuver – multiple times – on a client prone to choking, and last year, providing hospice care in clients’ own homes when a flu epidemic caused a widespread shortage of beds in the healthcare system. Everyone on her team volunteered for hospice duty, she said.

Noelle Siravo of Pawtucket, the mother of a 47 year-old man with significant disabilities, said he is able to live in an in-law apartment in her home only because of the “wonderful” people who provide him with skillful support and care.

“It’s a tremendous burden off my shoulders,” she said, but “the wages are insulting for what they do.”

In addition to everything else, Siravo said, direct care workers often spend some of their own money on the people they support, because many adults with developmental disabilities don’t have any families and still want an occasional treat.

Tumidajski said one in three workers at the ARC of Blackstone Valley leave their jobs in a year, and the agency has trouble recruiting replacements at pay that runs between $11 and $12 an hour. The ARC currently has 25 vacancies, she said.

The high turnover and vacancy rate threatens the quality of services and safety of clients, Tumidajski said. For the same work, Massachusetts already pays $15 an hour for direct care, and Connecticut has adopted a caregiver minimum wage of $14.75 an hour.

Jeff Perinetti, business representative for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the direct care workers his union represents took a 10 percent pay cut when Project Sustainability was enacted and have regained only six percent of it.

DiPalma said the meager wages paid to someone like Tumidajski are unconscionable.

The current rate model, introduced in 2011 with a $26 million budget cut, is built on the backs of workers, DiPalma said.

Established under the title “Project Sustainability, the fee-for-service model brought wholesale wage reductions without scaling back the state’s expectation for developmental disability services from private agencies or establishing a waiting list for services, he said. DiPalma, D-Middletown, is first of the Senate Finance Committee and chairs a special legislative commission that is studying the impact of Project Sustainability.

Shanley, D-Warwick, represents the Cowessett section of the city, which includes the Trudeau Center, one of about three dozen private providers of developmental disability services in Rhode Island and the place where his parents met as they cared for clients who had been stranded during the Blizzard of 1978,

The experience of helping others inspired his father, Paul Shanley, than 19, to become a police officer in Warwick, where he served 26 years, Shanley said. His mother, Mary Madden eventually became President of the Trudeau Center. She has recently been named interim director the Commuity Provider Network of Rhode Island, a trade association of private provider agencies. Both Shanley and DiPalma have previously filed legislation to increase wages for direct care workers.

Jeff Perinetti, business representative for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the direct care workers his union represents took a 10 percent pay cut when Project Sustainability was enacted and have regained only six percent of it.

in addition to the machinists’ union, the Demand Dignity campaign is backed by the Service Employees International Union, District 1199; the American Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals, and the United Nurses and Allied Professionals.

Nee set the tone for the event by invoking an enduring quotation from former Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Nee said that Humprey defined the “moral test of a government.” as the “way it treats those in the dawn of life, the children; those in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those in the shadows of life; the poor, the sick, and the disabled.”

“We have an opportunity, with this legislation and this campaign, to determine whether or not Rhode Island , our government, is going to be moving up to meeting that moral test of what government should be,” Nee said.

For too long, people working in the field of developmental disabilities have “too often been relegated to the shadows of our community and our government, and we’re here to say that that should not be happening any longer,” he said.

RI Governor's DD Budget Would Add $8.7 Million in Medicaid Funding For Wages, Higher Costs

By Gina Macris

Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo’s recently released budget proposal would add nearly $8.7 million in new funding to the system of privately-run services for adults with developmental disabilities in the next 17 months, through June 30, 2020.

Most of that overall $8.7-million-increase, $6.4 million in federal and state Medicaid money, would fund raises for workers of some three dozen private agencies that provide developmental disability services under contract with the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH).

The raises would take effect July 1. Funding for the added wages - an estimated 44 cents an hour – is carved out in the budget bill for Fiscal Year 2020 that Raimondo has submitted to the General Assembly.

The budget bill also requires that almost $1.6 million in federal-state Medicaid funds be earmarked for technical assistance to private providers changing from segregated care to community-based, integrated service to comply with a 2014 federal consent decree.

The current overall spending level for developmental disabilities, $271.7 million, would increase to $273.1 million for the budget ending June 30. In the next fiscal cycle beginning July 1, the spending ceiling would rise to nearly $280.9 million, including federal, state and miscellaneous sources of revenue.

The Division of Developmental Disabilities (DDD) draws more than half the resources assigned to BHDDH – which is currently budgeted for a grand total of almost $422.5 million. Under Raimondo’s plan, the bottom line for the entire department would grow to about $448.5 million in Fiscal 2020 – an increase of $26 million, including about $19.7 million in supplemental funding for the existing budget.

Developmental disability services are financed through the federal-state Medicaid program, with the federal government paying nearly 53 cents on the dollar.

The governor’s executive summary, however, tends to focus on the state outlay alone. It says $3.1 million in state funds would be earmarked to cover an existing deficit and an additional $3.3 million would be set aside in the fiscal year beginning July 1 for increased caseload costs.

Those budget items, combined with the state’s share of the $6.4 million proposed wage increase - $3 million – add up to $9.4 million, nearly twice the overall $5 million in new state tax dollars that Raimondo would apply to developmental disabilities for the remainder of the current fiscal year and the next one.

The state would have to use savings in other areas to fully fund Raimondo’s plan for developmental disabilities, but neither the budget language nor the governor’s narrative spells out which cost-cutting measures would fill the gap.

The first-quarter spending report for BHDDH put the projected deficit in developmental disabilities at a total of $7.6 million for the current fiscal year, including federal and state funding.

The updated report for the second quarter will not be ready until Jan. 31, according to BHDDH officials.

But at a recent press briefing on the budget, Rebeca Boss, the BHDDH director, said she is satisfied that the governor’s proposal will enable the department to balance its current budget.

Among other things, the plan would restore money in the current budget that the DDD otherwise would have saved if it had won federal approval for a “Health Home,” a Medicaid option featuring a managed-care approach that also provides for a third-party to coordinate services for individuals.

The Health Home would help DDD comply with a Medicaid rule for Home and Community Based Services which requires case management to be separate from funding or service delivery. Currently DDD is responsible both for funding and for case management, which Medicaid perceives as a conflict of interest.

Boss said BHDDH has not yet submitted an application for a Health Home option for developmental disabilities. The budget assumes that a health home plan for developmental disabilities will be approved and go into operation during Fiscal 2020, which begins July 1.

Medicaid will reimburse 90 percent of the state outlay for health homes for a maximum of two years. After that period, the reimbursement rate for health homes will drop back to the regular rate for Rhode Island, whatever it may be at that time..

To help close the current deficit, the governor recommended an additional $273,412 in state revenue for BHDDH to pay homemaker licensed practical nurses who work with adults with developmental disabilities. The Executive Office of Human Services granted them a slightly higher pay increase than BHDDH had budgeted and the General Assembly had approved.

In adding $3.3 million in state revenue for “caseload” expenditures for the 2020 fiscal year, Raimondo’s executive summary said she “accepts the Department’s (BHDDH’s) most up to date projections” on costs, “ensuring no changes to services for DD consumers and continued financing to improve achievement of consent decree mandated services.”

Last year at this time, Raimondo had proposed cutting a total of more than $18 million in federal-state funding from developmental disability services, with a spokeswoman for the Office of Management and Budget saying the proposed reduction was based on calculations made from “estimated growth rates in the cost of providing services.” She did not elaborate.

Raimondo, pressed by the independent court monitor overseeing the implementation of a 2014 federal civil rights consent decree, eventually restored the funding and pledged the state’s support of the work ordered by the federal court.

The consent decree requires Rhode Island to correct violations of the integration mandate of the Americans With Disabilities Act, reinforced by the 1999 Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, by ending its over-reliance on sheltered workshops and segregated day care.

This year, according to Boss, BHDDH submitted cost projections on the basis of actual claims, as directed by the Executive Office of Health And Human Services, rather than individual funding authorizations.

In the process of updating projections, the data was refined to remove claims that had been double-counted on Medicaid rolls of both BHDDH and EOHHS, according to the executive summary of the budget.

For Fiscal 2020, the governor’s budget summary highlighted three additional areas for savings:

• ·A continuation of “residential rebalancing”, a multi-year effort to reduce the number of people in group homes, a cost-saving measure that also is intended to provide more “community-based placements such as shared living.” The budget projects $1.5 million in “residential rebalancing” in 2020.

• Closure of one state-operated group home for an estimated savings of nearly $92,000. The staff in that location will move to other sites, reducing the need for overtime in the state-run system.

• So-called “right sizing” of staffing at the state-run group home system to realize additional projected savings of $202,721. “Right-sizing” means staffing patterns will be reassessed and employees will re-bid jobs. This change is expected to reduce overnight staffing and further reduce overtime costs.

Mediator Steps Into Labor Dispute Over Low Wages At Northern Rhode Island DD Service Provider

By Gina Macris

Seven Hills Rhode Island and the union representing workers who assist some 250 adults with developmental disabilities have agreed to meet with a mediator in an attempt to settle a months-long labor dispute.

A union spokeswoman, Jeanne Jose, organizer for the United Nurses and Allied Professionals, said the first mediation session was Wednesday, Jan. 23, and the two sides agreed to meet again with a mediator next week. Earlier in the month, the union membership, about 200 to 220 employees, authorized the negotiating committee to call a strike, if needed, Jose said.

UNAP initially proposed a 5 percent increase in wages across the board, she said. More than half the membership makes $10.94 an hour, and a five percent increase would add about 55 cents to that rate. Thirty-nine per-diem employees, who are on call but receive no benefits, are paid $12.36 an hour. She said 12 behavioral assistants, who must have bachelor’s degrees, make $15.36 an hour.

In the most recent bargaining session in December, Jose said, management gave the union a choice: either an across-the-board increase of 13 cents an hour, or a 25-cent increase for those making $10.94 an hour and no raise for higher-paid union members.

Neither option is acceptable, she said. The union membership voted Jan. 9 to authorize the bargaining committee to call a walkout, if necessary..

Efforts to reach management, represented by Cliff R. Cabral, vice president of Seven Hills Rhode Island, have been unsuccessful.

Jose said the union also seeks to preserve health care benefits, which she described as “decent.” Employees pay 20 percent of costs, she said, but rising premiums have eroded take-home pay.

There are three other areas where the union wants improvements:

· An increase in reimbursement for transportation, from 40 cents to 45 cents a mile for direct care workers, who are required to use their own vehicles on the job. The standard reimbursement rate allowed by the Internal Revenue Service in 2018 was 54.5 cents a mile. For 2019, the IRS increased the rate to 58 cents an hour.

· Contract language that ensures employees will receive adequate training or re-training before they are tested or re-tested on protocols for dispensing medication to clients.

· Adequate staffing to ensure health and safety on an as-needed basis; for example, when someone who uses a wheelchair is too heavy for one worker to transfer from the chair to a car to go to a doctor’s appointment and return home.

UNAP has represented developmental disability workers at Seven Hills and its predecessor organizations since about 2005, Jose said. The last contract expired in June, 2018.

With direct support wages linked to government funding, the labor dispute underlines the gap between pay in Rhode Island and neighboring states for the same work.

In Connecticut, all direct care workers make $14.75 an hour, effective Jan. 1.

In Massacusetts, where they’re called Personal Care Attendants, those who belong to the Service Employees International Union make $15 an hour.

The minimum wage in Massachusetts is $12 an hour. In Rhode Island it is $10.50. Governor Gina Raimondo recently proposed raising the minimum wage to $11.10 an hour and a wage increase for direct care workers that would add about 44 cents an hour to their paychecks.

The trade association representing about two thirds of private providers of developmental disability services, including Seven Hills, has said the average entry-level wage among its member organizations is $11.36 an hour.

Seven Hills Rhode Island is affiliated with the Seven Hills Foundation, a multi-faceted human service agency which has a broad presence in Massachusetts.

Union Raises Strike Possibility At Northern RI DD Provider Over Submarket Wages; No Deadline Set

By Gina Macris

Unionized workers supporting about 250 adults with developmental disabilities have indicated they may strike at Seven Hills Rhode Island over wages that lag significantly below those in neighboring states. No deadline has been set for a walkout.

The possibility of a strike by about 180 members of the United Nurses and Allied Professionals (UNAP) was disclosed in a letter that the management of Seven Hills sent to families Jan. 15. Talks between labor and management continue, according to a source with knowledge of the negotiations.

An official of the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) indicated that the union must give a 10-day notice of any walkout.

Kevin Savage, Associate Director for Quality Management, said Jan.18 that “BHDDH is in close contact with Seven Hills administration, who have put together a plan to ensure coverage of necessary services in the event that the union gives them a 10-day notice that a walk out will occur.”

He said BHDDH contracts with Seven Hills to support about 250 persons with developmental disabilities in a variety of residential settings, as well as supported employment services and non-work daytime activities.

The Jan. 15 letter to families, signed by Seven Hills’ vice president, Cliff R. Cabral, said that a work stoppage could force the agency to suspend or reduce “several program offerings.”

“Our day services program will be limited to 24 residential participants,” Cabral said. Seven Hills has 76 residential clients, according to the latest data compiled by the state.

Efforts to reach Cabral or a UNAP spokesperson were not immediately successful.

Average entry-level wages for direct care workers in Rhode Island are $11.36 an hour, according to the most recent figure released by the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island, a trade association representing two thirds of the private providers of developmental disability services in the state.

Governor Gina Raimondo has proposed an incremental raise – estimated by BHDDH at an average of about 44 cents an hour – effective July 1.

In Connecticut, entry-level direct care workers must be paid a minimum of $14.75 houirly. The Connecticut legislature approved the raises last May, even though it had not yet acted on the state budget, to avert a strike that had been planned at that time by the Service Employees’ International Union (SEIU). The wage hikes became effective three weeks ago, on Jan. 1.

SEIU also has negotiated a $15 hourly minimum wage with Massachusetts for direct care workers in that state that went into effect July 1, 2018.

In the letter to families, Cabral said that “Seven Hills Rhode Island stands with our employees and will continue to advocate on their behalf for the living wage they deserve.”

He said Rhode Island’s system of care for adults with developmental disabilities still has not recovered from the General Assembly’s $24 million reduction in services in 2011. (Final figures on actual spending put the total over $26 million.)

Despite repeated and concerted advocacy, “our state representatives continue to place funding for individuals with developmental disabilities low on their priority list,”he said. The General Assembly’s inaction has significantly “compromised the sustainability of the current system,” which, Cabral said, has been weakened by below-market compensation and high staff turnover.

“Organizations such as ours have taken several painful measures throughout the past decade in an effort to ensure our fiscal sustainability, including liquidating assets and significantly reducing our administrative resources,” Cabral wrote.

While it has adhered to the “highest delivery standards possible,” Seven Hills cannot sustain its efforts indefinitely, Cabral said. He called on UNAP to join with management “to more productively direct our collective efforts toward lobbying for a substantial investment in this year’s state budget in order to adequately address the needs of those with developmental disabilities while ensuring a living wage for the remarkable individuals who support them.”

Seven Hills Rhode Island offers a variety of services for children, families and adults, with offices in Cranston and Woonsocket. Services for adults with developmental disabilities are based in Woonsocket, covering northern Rhode Island.

'Our Lives Turned Upside Down' When Daughter Entered RI Adult DD System, Mother Says

Louis DiPalma, Rebecca Boss, and Kerri Zanchi watch A. Anthony Antosh of Rhode Island College present consumer and family perspectives on the state’s services for adults with developmental disabilities Photo by Anne Peters

By Gina Macris

A Rhode Island Senate study commission spent nearly two hours Dec. 12 laying out a catalog of strengths and weaknesses in Rhode Island’s system for helping people with developmental disabilities.

But in the end, the personal stories of two mothers, Amy Kelly of Smithfield and Martha Costa of Portsmouth, focused the commission’s attention on the crises now unfolding for at least several families who are at their wits end.

In the catalogue, their experiences come under “residential services-need for specialized medical/behavioral residential models.”

For Amy Kelly, that means that every single service provider in Rhode Island – about three dozen - has turned away her 21 year-old daughter, who is autistic, has behavioral problems, and functions in many ways as a kindergartener.

“So now what do I do?” Kelly asked in a letter to the commission chairman, Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown. Kelly is a widow, and works fulltime. Her daughter, Kayla, was asked to leave the Trudeau Center in Warwick because of injuries to staff.

For a month now, Kayla has been at home all the time and her problematic behaviors have intensified, Kelly wrote. “She is out of her routine, asking for “friends,” “yellow bus,” “trip,” and other favorite things and experiences that she misses..

Kelly has been forced to choose “self-directed” services, meaning that she must find her own workers,“which is pretty much impossible,” she wrote to DiPalma.

And the Home Based Therapeutic Services that helped Kayla outside of school hours while she was still in special education are no longer available.

“I cannot believe there are no programs in RI for families in this situation!” Kelly wrote. “When my daughter turned 21 in May everything in our lives turned upside down.”

Martha Costa * courtesy of Capitol TV

Martha Costa agreed. She attended the Commission hearing at the State House on behalf of her own family and five others in Portsmouth who have become friends as their children have faced behavioral challenges growing up and have aged out of the school system into purview of the state Division of Developmental Disabilities (DDD).

As the mother of a 22 year-old man on the autism spectrum, she said her experience has been that once young people with complex needs turn 21, “there is really no place for them to go.”

The family might be told to go to a hospital, but with the exception of Butler Hospital in Providence, a mental health facility, “the hospital is horrible, because it’s just more trauma going there.”

The 21 year-old daughter of a friend of Costa’s had meltowns after her mother – her primary caregiver and the one who organized her services - died in September. The woman’s daughter, who has multiple disabilities, was hospitalized because there was “nowhere for her to go,” Costa said. The young woman was “restrained, medically and physically. It’s heartbreaking,” Costa said.

“It’s lucky you have good parents who are helping these kids, but you know, we’re all getting older and we’re not going to be able to,” she said. The aging of parents, who are often primary care givers, is a broad concern among families, according to survey results.

“There are some kids who don’t have that parent support and they’re on the street,” Costa said. “That’s sad, when they can be a very productive part of our community.”

Kerri Zanchi, the state’s Director of Developmental Disabilities, thanked Costa for coming forward.

One of the biggest challenges in residential services, Zanchi said, is a dearth of specialized homes for individuals with behavioral and other complex needs, as well as a lack of therapists and other clinicians to give them the proper attention.

“There’s a huge need coming” as teenagers with complex disabilities leave schools, she said. “We need to know what that need is and we need to start working on it lot earlier than when they turn 21 and come into our system.”

Zanchi referred to the division’s Eligibility by 17 policy, which aims to give families, schools, and the adult system plenty of time to plan a smooth transition.

In the catalogue, one of the “challenges” the state officials listed in implementing the Eligibility by 17 policy is “resource and service difference for transitioning youth vs adult services.” In the summary that family and consumer representatives submitted, they commented that “transition from high school is a ‘nightmare.“

Zanchi continued her response to Costa. “We certainly recognize every day the crises we have to manage” in order to support the individuals involved and to try to grow the system’s capacity, she said.

And there are committed providers who are willing to help the state, but who also want to do that with the right staffing that will keep all individuals safe, Zanchi said. “We are all hands on deck. I know it probably doesn’t feel like enough,” she said.

Costa agreed. “ I understand what you’ve been doing and I know that everyone has been working hard . Still, it’s not enough,” she said.

Gloria Quinn, executive director of West Bay Residential Services, said her agency works very well with the state as a partner in exceptional situations, but it is extremely difficult as long as there there is a paucity of established expertise in the community that is accessible to the developmental disabilities providers.

“Very often we are creating something new, which takes an enormous amount of time,” Quinn said, and the funding is not enough. Most importantly, when the agency helps someone with increased needs it runs the risk of jeopardizing supports for other people, particularly in a residential setting, she said.

Peter Quattromani, President and CEO of United Cerebral Palsy Rhode Island, pointed to the low wages for direct care staff that frustrate all involved; those who love the work but can’t pay the bills, employers who can’t fill jobs, and consumers and families who can’t find suitable services.

“It’s an incredibly difficult job” , he said, and attracting staff is likewise very difficult, given the low wages.

Commission member Kelly Donovan, who herself receives services from DDD, had sparked the conversation by wondering aloud why those with serious behavioral problems have difficulty finding appropriate support.

She said she agreed with Quattromani and Costa, and she added another factor that she believes contributes to the problem: a societal stigma against those with a broad range of mental illnesses who exhibit aggressive behavior.

During the last month, commission members, representing the executive branch of government, private providers, and consumers and their families, were asked to complete a survey cataloging the strengths and weaknesses of the existing Medicaid fee-for-service system, called Project Sustainability.

The commission plans to use the results of the survey, named the “Current State Assessment,” to seek advice from outside experts and further the group’s deliberations in the future, according to a statement issued at DiPalma’s behest.

Directly or indirectly, a lack of adequate funding in various contexts permeated three summaries of the survey results, each one presented by a representative of each of the three segments of the commission. Transportation, for example, has become a bigger problem now that there is a greater emphasis on community-based services, which require more than the two daily trips usually allowed by individual funding authorizations. Families also cited difficulties of non-English speakers in getting information and services.

But Rebecca Boss, director of the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals, also said the developmental disabilities budget has increased significantly since 2015, and listed advances made in the last two years, including:

• $6.8 million for supported employment

• two annual wage increases for direct care workers (The average hourly pay for front-line workers is $11.36 an hour)

• the acquisition of a modern data management system

• an increase in staff for quality management, implementation of a federal civil rights consent decree and for Medicaid-mandated Home and Community Based Services, as well as assistance in maximizing the existing budget.

She described the funding needs of the system as “dynamic.”

“We are engaging in discussions with our partners about what those needs are,” Boss said. “Governor (Gina) Raimondo has demonstrated a willingness to look at the system and make adjustments in the budget as we go along. So this is the process that we’re currently working on and engaging in those conversations on a regular basis.”

Raimondo is to present adjustments for the current budget, as well as her proposal for the next fiscal cycle, during the third week of January.

Christopher Semonelli, a commission member and the father of a teenager with complex needs, commented on the origins of Project Sustainability, which seemed to him like system “in a death spiral, and there was basically a feeding frenzy as to how to continue the system; how to go after the available funds.”

“I don’t think the legislative base should be blamed” for cutbacks that launched Project Sustainability in 2011, “because there was a lack of advocacy, “he said. “Strong advocacy could have prevented that from happening. That is huge and needs to be built going forward.”

DiPalma had the last word. Semonelli “made a great point about advocacy, but he shouldn’t let the General Assembly off the hook,” DiPalma said. “This is where the buck stops.”

Read the summaries presented at the meeting. For the state’s assessment, click here. For consumer and advocates’ comments, click here. For service providers’ comments, click here.

RI DD Services: The Annual Scramble Begins To Avoid Waitlists or Reduced Payments To Providers

By Gina Macris

For the second consecutive year, the director of the Rhode Island Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) has raised the possibility that adults with developmental disabilities might face waiting periods for services if the department cannot resolve a projected $9,.4 million deficit by next June.

Most of that estimated $9.4 million shortfall - $7.6 million – occurs in the Division of Developmental Disabilities (DDD).

Waiting lists and reductions in reimbursement rates to private providers are among alternatives proposed by BHDDH director Rebecca Boss in a corrective action plan for dealing with the shortage in state revenue. Private organizations do most of the front-line work with adults facing intellectual and developmental challenges.

Any state agency running over budget must submit a corrective action plan to the state budget office. Seven other agencies are in the same position as BHDDH.

While complying with the requirement for a deficit-reduction plan, BHDDH also has prepared a budget request which seeks a additional $12.7 million in state revenue for the private system of developmental disability services through June 30, 2020. That total includes:

• $7.6 million in supplemental funding to close the gap in payments to private service providers during the current fiscal year.

• $5.1 million for the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2019.

No Wage Hikes In BHDDH Budget Request

The combined $12.7 million request does not reflect any wage increases for direct care workers in private agencies, a BHDDH spokeswoman said. According to a trade association, workers receive an average of $11.36 an hour - less than the $12 hourly pay offered at the Target store on the other side of the Massachusetts state line in Seekonk during Thanksgiving week.

The consultant involved in developing the existing fee-for-service rate structure seven years ago said recently that it’s “past time” for an overhaul of the reimbursements. Both House and Senate leaders say they support the idea of wage hikes for front-line workers.

Governor Gina Raimondo has not responded to email requests from Developmental Disability News for comment on recent public remarks of the consultant, Mark Podrazik, President of Burns & Associates.

Raimondo is due to present her budget proposal to the General Assembly the third week in January. She must consider many factors, including a projected $41.9 million deficit in overall state spending and recent revenue estimates running about $5.4 million below the previous projections, made last May.

Federal Officials Watching Budget Process

A lot can happen between now, the start of the budget planning cycle, and the end of June, when General Assembly adopts final figures to close out one fiscal year and launch a new budget on July 1.

And when it comes to spending on developmental disabilities, the conversation has broadened in the last several years to include the ever-increasing demands for reform imposed by a 2014 federal civil rights consent decree between the state and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Before the budget was finalized in the last session of the General Assembly, the independent federal court monitor for the consent decree had sought and obtained written assurances from Raimondo that the state would support mandated systemic changes in services as Rhode Island moves toward community-based, integrated supports of adults with developmental disabilities.

In a letter dated May 14, 2018 to Charles Moseley, the federal court monitor, Raimondo said, “Rhode Island has made significant progress in meeting the requirements of the Consent Decree, and we will continue to prioritize this work.”

What the state’s commitment to developmental disabilities looks like in the current budget is level funding.

Last January, Raimondo proposed a cut of $18.4 million to payments for private service providers, but after better-than-expected revenue estimates in May, pressure from constituents, and Moseley’s request for assurances, Raimondo reversed her position and the General Assembly approved a status quo budget.

Boss Details The Current Problem

Now Boss says that level funding will not be enough to meet expenses, primarily because of an increasing caseload and rising average costs per person. These two trends can be traced back to compliance with the consent decree.

In the last fiscal year, which ended June 30, DDD spent a total of $228.3 million in federal-state Medicaid funds, including $111.1 million in state revenue, for payments to private agencies that provide most of the developmental disability services, Boss wrote to the state Budget Office in October.

The current budget authorizes an expenditure of $229.4 million for those Medicaid payments, with $107.5 from state revenue and the rest from the federal government.

However, in the current budget, DDD is expected to stretch the $229.4 million to cover some additional mandates:

• a total of $1.5 million on contracts and staff to support the consent decree

• $620,000 – about $400,000 more than anticipated – to pay for an increase in wages for home health aides and licensed practical nurses (LPNs) who serve adults with developmental disabilities in their own homes. Boss said the state Medicaid office had set a slightly higher rate for the LPNs than the department had anticipated.

Together, these two factors mean that there is $1 million less in the current budget than there was in the last one for actual services to adults with developmental disabilities, Boss wrote in a report to state Budget Office on spending for the first quarter of the fiscal year.

At the same time, DDD estimates its overall caseload will increase about 1.5 percent during the current budget cycle, based on trends over the last two years. That increase will cost an additional $1.1 million from state revenue,, according to Boss.

In addition, nearly 900 persons are slated for re-evaluation of their needs during the current fiscal year, with interviewers using a revised assessment that has been resulting in generally higher per-person costs since it was adopted in November, 2016, Boss said. The use of the revised assessment, the Supports Intensity Scale – A, is expected to add about $900,000 from state revenue to service costs, Boss wrote in the first-quarter spending report, submitted in October.

Moreover, DDD expects to spend all $6.8 million allocated by the General Assembly for a supported employment program that pays private providers performance bonuses for job placement and retention., The first allocation, in the fiscal year that began July 1, 2016, was underutilized.

Boss said she did not favor a wait list for services as a corrective action plan because it would cause hardship and make DDD unable to continue complying with the 2014 federal consent decree.

Rate reductions to private service providers also would make it impossible to comply with the consent decree and would destabilize the entire system of care, Boss said.

Savings anticipated in State-Run Group Homes

Boss said she does favor another option, consolidation of the state-run group home system known at Rhode Island Community Living and Supports (RICLAS.) DDD is working on closing one state-run group home and relocating existing staff to save on overtime costs, Boss said.

Changes in group home configuration toward smaller units more accessible to the community are being required anyway by the Medicaid Home and Community Based Final Rule.

The consultant for Burns & Associates, Mark Podrazik, recommended in 2011 that the state gradually eliminate RICLAS to more more equitably fund private providers, who were facing severe cuts in payments that resulted in dramatically lower wages and made it difficult for employers to fill job vacancies, problems that persists today.

In testimony Nov. 13 before a special Senate commission, Podrazik said he was told in 2011 that the state did not want to address RICLAS out of concern about a fight from unions.

Over the last several years, however, the size of the RICLAS caseload has declined through attrition. For example, at the start of 2016, there were 210 persons in RICLAS homes, state officials said at the time. Six weeks ago, in mid-October, the RICLAS caseload had shrunk to 126, according to state records.

RI House Speaker And Senate President Both Support Higher Pay For DD Workers

By Gina Macris

The top two leaders in the Rhode Island General Assembly say they support the idea of increasing the pay of workers who provide services for adults with developmental disabilities.

“I am very supportive of the developmentally disabled community,” said House Speaker Nicholas A. Mattiello, “and I believe those people who care for them should receive a rate increase. The House of Representatives will certainly strongly consider such a request in next year’s budget deliberations.”

Senate President Dominick J. Ruggerio is likewise supportive, a spokesman said.

“The Senate President supports increasing wages for providers of services for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities,” Ruggerio’s spokesman said, adding that “Senator Louis DiPalma (D-Middletown) has provided extraordinary leadership on this issue, including a proposal to gradually increase wages for providers, and the Senate President supports his initiative.”

Whether Governor Raimondo will consider increasing funding for the private system of care for adults with developmental disabilities in her budget proposal for the next fiscal year remains to be seen. Her office has not responded to a Nov. 20 email seeking comment on possible pay increases.

Developmental Disability News asked the state’s leaders whether they would consider re-visiting reimbursement rates after Mark Podrazik, the president of the healthcare consulting firm Burns & Associates, told a Senate commission chaired by Senator DiPalma that a review of pay hikes is warranted.

DiPalma’s commission is studying the current fee-for- service system, called Project Sustainability, which Burns and Associates was instrumental in developing seven years ago. While the consultants took the lead in the project design, the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) disregarded the actual reimbursement rates the firm proposed, instead reducing most of them by 17 to 19 percent before forwarding the final version of the plan to the General Assembly in the spring of 2011.

Burns & Associates recommends a rate overhaul once every five years, Podrazik told the commission Nov. 13. After nearly seven and a half years, “it’s past time,” he said.

Podrazik testified that Project Sustainability was shaped by the state’s drive to control costs, but by that measure, the system has failed.

The developmental disability budget repeatedly has run over the limits set by the General Assembly, and the gaps have only increased during the last few years as the U.S. District Court has enforced a federal civil rights agreement with the state that requires Rhode Island to integrate adults with developmental disabilities in their communities.

That approach, necessary to correct violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act, costs more than the reliance on sheltered workshops and segregated day centers codified in Project Sustainability.

DiPalma, the chairman of the Project Sustainability commission, takes exception to a view that the developmental disability services program has been overspending.

“If the budget was unrealistic from the get-go, you’re going to exceed that budget,” he said at the commission meeting Nov. 13. He has studied developmental disability service budgets for ten years, he said, and none of them have been realistic.

Increasing wages for direct care workers “needs to become a priority” for a number of reasons, DiPalma said in a telephone interview. “If it’s a priority, we’ll find the money.”

In 2016, DiPalma called for a $15 hourly wage for direct care workers by July 1, 2021, but now he says “we need to get there faster.”

And he indicated he no longer believes $15 is enough. For example, Massachusetts, an easy commute from many places in Rhode Island, is already paying that amount to members of the Service Employees Union International who work with persons with disabilities. A bill signed by Governor Charles Baker in June put Massachusetts on a path to a $15 minimum wage in five years.

At one time, those who worked with adults facing intellectual and developmental challenges had full time jobs with benefits. But Project Sustainability resulted in drastic cuts to wages and benefits that destabilized the workforce, forcing many to leave the field or to take two or three jobs to make ends meet.

Turnover averages about one in three workers a year, and employers are unable to fill one in six jobs, according to the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island, a trade association. At the same time, the demands of the consent decree require more highly skilled staff.

Since July 1, 2016, the General Assembly has enacted two relatively small pay increases for direct care staff and their supervisors at private agencies serving adults with developmental disabilities, but the average pay, $11.36 an hour, is still two dollars less than the hourly rate of $13.97 which Burns & Associates recommended in 2011.

Healthcare Consultant Says "It's Past Time" For RI To Revisit Rates It Pays For Private DD Services

From foreground, on the right, Rebecca Boss, Louis DiPalma, Peter Quattromani, Kelly Donovan, Deb Kney, and Kevin McHale, all members of the Project Sustainability Commission. DiPalma is chairman. All photos by Anne Peters

By Gina Macris

Rhode Island is overdue in undertaking a comprehensive review of rates it pays private providers of services for adults with developmental disabilities, according to a top official of a healthcare consulting firm who helped develop the existing payment structure seven years ago.

Mark Podrazik

“It’s past time,” said Mark Podrazik, president and co-founder of Burns & Associates. He said the firm recommends an overhaul of rates once every five years. Podrazik appeared Nov. 13 before a Senate-sponsored commission which is evaluating the way the state organizes and funds its services for those facing intellectual and developmental challenges.

The commission chairman, Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown, had invited Podrazik to help the 19-member panel gain a deeper understanding of the controversial billing and payment system now in place before it recommends changes intended to ultimately improve the quality of life of some 4,000 adults with developmental disabilities.

Burns & Associates was hired by the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) in 2010 to develop and implement Project Sustainability, a fee-for-service system of payments to hold private providers accountable for the services they deliver and give consumers more flexibility in choosing what they wanted, Podrazik said.

In answering questions posed by commission members, Podrazik made it clear that the final version of Project Sustainability was shaped by a frenzy to control costs. The state ignored key recommendations of Burns & Associates intended to more equitably fund the private service providers and to protect the interests of those in the state’s care.

Podrazik said that overall, Burns & Associates believed the Division of Developmental Disabilities (DDD) had neither the capacity or the competence implement Project Sustainability at the outset or to carry out the mandates to companion civil rights agreements with the U.S. Department of Justice reached in 2013 and 2014.

“I think people were a little shocked” by the new federal requirements to integrate day services in the community and by the question of “who was going to do it,” Podrazik said of the DDD staff at the time.

DDD also had an antiquated data system that ill served Project Sustainability and the separate demands for statistics imposed by a federal court monitor overseeing the consent decrees.

Podrazik said the aged IT system was the biggest problem faced by Burns & Associates.

Asked whether funding changed to implement the civil rights agreements, Podrazik said he didn’t recall that there were any significant changes, if any at all. Burns & Associates ended its day-to-day involvement with BHDDH in Feb. 2015, when Maria Montanaro became the department director. (She has since been succeeded by Rebecca Boss, and there has been a complete reorganization and expansion of management in DDD. A modern IT system recently went online.)

Between the fall of 2015 and early 2016, Burns & Associates had a separate contract with the Executive Office of Human Services, which asked for advice on cutting supplemental payments to adults with developmental disabilities.

While Project Sustainability was supposed to give consumers more choice, the U.S. Department of Justice found just the opposite in a 2013 investigation.

DOJ lawyers wrote in their findings that “systemic State actions and policies” directed resources for employment and non-work activities to sheltered workshops and facility-based day programs, making it difficult for individuals to get services outside those settings.

“Flexibility” Functioned As Tool For Controlling Costs

At the meeting Nov. 13, Andrew McQuaide, a commission member and senior director at Perspectives Corporation, a service provider, suggested that features of Project Sustainability ostensibly designed to encourage flexibility and autonomy for those using the services functioned in reality as mechanisms to control costs.

Podrazik said, “In my heart of hearts, I think everybody wanted more flexibility,” but “then the financial constraints were imposed in such a way that the objectives could not necessarily be met.”

“We were not hired to cut budgets,” Podrazik said. Going into the project, “we did not know what the budget was” for Project Sustainability.

He said Burns & Associates recommended fair market rates for a menu of services under the new plan. For example, it proposed an hourly rate for direct care workers was $13.97. But BHDD refused the consultants’ advice to fight “aggressively” for this level of funding, Podrazik said. With the budget year that began July 1, 2011, BHDDH recommended, and the General Assembly adopted, a rate of $12.03 an hour, nearly two dollars less.

The state had the option to change the rate effective Oct. 1, 2011, and it did, dropping the hourly reimbursement for direct care workers to $10.66 to absorb last-minute cuts made by the General Assembly in the developmental disabilities budget for the fiscal year that had begun July 1. (Rates have increased slightly since then. The average direct care worker made about $11.36 an hour in early 2018.)

“I understood why the department (BHDDH) was doing what they were doing, because they were getting an incredible amount of pressure on the budget – so much so that they were getting their hand slapped when they were over,” Podrazik said.

“From the outside coming in, there was a lack of confidence that BHDDH could actually administer a budget that came in on target, so that there was an intense scrutiny to keep the budget intact. It did not help that that they were cut and that there were no caseload increases (in the budget) for multiple years,” Podrazik said.

“They were behind the eight-ball before anything was contemplated,” he said.

Louis DiPalma, Rebecca Boss

DiPalma, the commission chairman, saw the situation from a different perspective: “Someone will say the agency exceeded the budget, but if it was unrealistic from the get-go, you’re going to exceed that budget.”

As a legislator, DiPalma said, he has looked at developmental disability service budgets for ten years, and there hasn’t been one that was realistic.

“Right,” Podrazik replied, adding that funding for developmental disabilities had been declining from year to year in Rhode Island, even before Burns & Associates was hired for Project Sustainability.

Podrazik said he hasn’t been following developmental disabilities in Rhode Island during the last few years, but “somebody should look at the rates, if for no other reason” than “we’re in an economy that’s very different than it was in 2010.” He cited health care costs and a move toward “$15 an hour wages.”

“It’s a whole different landscape,” he said.

Consultants Recommended Eliminating Separate State-Run DD System

In 2011, with Project Sustainability facing a funding shortage even before it got off the ground, Burns & Associates recommended that BHDDH get more money to support the services of private agencies by eliminating – gradually – the state-run developmental disabilities system, called Rhode Island Community Living and Supports (RICLAS.)

At the time, average per-person cost for a RICLAS client ran about three times more than the average in the privately-run system. All the RICLAS clients could eventually be transferred to private providers, Burns & Associates advised the state.

“This recommendation was shut down immediately, with the reason being a protracted fight with the unions,” Podrazik said in prepared remarks.

Burns & Associates then recommended lowering the reimbursements to RICLAS. “This was also shut down,” Podrazik wrote.

“It was apparent early on that there were funds to be redistributed between RICLAS and the Private DD system, but there was no appetite to do so. It is unclear exactly where this directive was coming from within state government, but that was the directive given” to Burns & Associates, Podrazik wrote.

Providers Expected To Maintain Same Service For Reduced Pay

Commission members asked Podrazik whether anyone at Burns & Associates or state government believed that it was possible for private service providers to absorb the rate reductions written into Project Sustainability, given the fact that about half the agencies were already running deficits before the program was enacted.

McQuaide quoted from the memo that BHDDH sent the General Assembly in May, 2011, explaining its approach to implementing Project Sustainability.

“We did not reduce our assumptions 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,” the memo said.

McQuaide asked, "Did anyone actually think that was possible?”

“I don’t know,” Podrazik replied, but he remembered meetings in which participants expressed sentiments similar to the quotation highlighted by McQuaide.

Given the budgetary restrictions, Podrazik said, he favored reducing rates rather than cutting back on services or creating a waiting list for services.

Podrazik said Burns & Associates was hired to deal with certain problems; not to review services for adults with developmental disabilities top to bottom.

Assessment Used For Funding Became Controversial

Asked to change the assessment used to determine each person’s need for support, Burns and Associates recommended the Supports Intensity Scale, or SIS, and advised it should be administered by an entity “other than the provider or the state to avoid the perception of gaming the system,” he said.

The state went forward with the SIS, linked it to funding individual authorizations, or personal budgets for clients, and assigned the administration of the assessment to the state’s own social caseworkers.

The fact that the SIS is administered within BHDDH has been criticized by the DOJ and an independent federal court monitor. With federal scrutiny on BHDDH, and numerous complaints from families and providers that the SIS scores were manipulated to cut costs, the department switched to a revised SIS assessment and retrained all its assessors in November, 2016.

Funding Authorized Three Months At A Time To Control Costs

According to Podrazik, Burns & Associates recommended each client’s funding authorization – or personal budget – be awarded on an annual basis, to allow individuals to plan their lives and providers to look ahead in figuring out expenses.

But the state insisted on the option to change reimbursement rates on a quarterly basis as a means of managing costs more closely within a fiscal year. That was the feature of Project Sustainability which enabled BHDDH to impose two consecutive cuts on providers, once on July 1, 2011, and a second time on Oct. 1, 2011. Since then, rates have increased incrementally.

At the hearing, Podrazik illustrated the difference between a yearly authorization and a quarterly one in the life of a consumer.

“Maybe someone goes away for the month of August,” he said. If that person has a quarterly authorization, the money for services in August reverts to the state. But with an annual authorization, the funding can be used for the person’s benefit during another month of the year.

Podrazik agreed with a commission member, Peter Quattromani, CEO of United Cerebral Palsy, that quarterly authorizations compromise the flexibility intended to be part of the design of Project Sustainability.

Podrazik said he knows of no other state that makes quarterly authorizations for developmental disability services.

DiPalma, the commission chairman, asked if there was any thought given to the impact of a requirement that providers document how each staff person working during the day spends his or her time with clients, in 15-minute blocks.

Podrazik said, “I don’t think people thought the impact would be negligible, but the desire for accountability outweighed that, and I fully endorsed them.”

Project Sustainability decreased overhead costs to private providers but did not offset those cuts with allowances for hiring the personnel necessary to process the documentation.

When DiPalma thanked Podrazik for his time, Podrazik quipped that Rhode Island was “the last place I thought I’d ever be.”

“The Rhode Island project wore me down, so I’m working with hospitals these days,” Podrazik said.

He said he came back to Rhode Island because DiPalma was very persuasive and because he wanted to “set the record straight” on the involvement of Burns & Associates with Project Sustainability.

Burns & Associates President To Speak To RI Senate Commission Studying DD Reimbursement

A special commission of the Rhode Island Senate on “Project Sustainability” will meet Tuesday, Nov. 13 to hear a presentation from the president of a healthcare consulting firm which helped the state develop its current fee-for-service Medicaid reimbursement system for private providers who serve adults with developmental disabilities.

The speaker, Mark Podrazik , is the president and co-founder of Burns & Associates, an Arizona-based company which advised the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) on recommendations BHDDH made to the General Assembly. The legislature made the final decisions about the reimbursement model, which was enacted in 2011.

Burns & Associates was paid nearly $1.4 million for their work developing “Project Sustainability” and analyzing its fiscal impact between 2010 and 2016, according to state records.

Tuesday’s public meeting will begin at 3 p.m. in the Senate Lounge of the State House. Public comment is invited at the end of the session, according to the commission chairman, State Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown. The commission includes 19 members from state government and a cross-section of the developmental disability community. Among them are two consumers and representatives of advocacy groups and service providers.

RI Consent Decree Judge Wants To Sharpen Focus On DD Services That Encourage Integration

By Gina Macris

For nearly three years, the U.S. District Court in Rhode Island has monitored the state’s progress in implementing a federal civil rights consent decree that seeks to integrate adults facing intellectual or developmental challenges with their communities, detailing the progress made and work yet to be done.

With the 2014 consent decree nearing the middle of its 10-year run, and an earlier, more limited companion agreement designed to expire in July, 2020, Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. has asked participants to come to court next time with a different approach.

In a hearing Oct.30, McConnell asked an independent court monitor, lawyers for the U.S. Department of Justice and state officials to come to court next time with a focus on the areas of greatest concern and to be prepared with recommendations for what the Court can do other than monitor developments.

On Oct. 30, he boiled down the core issues into two parts.

• Each person protected by the consent decree should have a thoughtful long-range plan for a career that reflects his or her unique needs, preferences and goals.

• Actual services funded by the state should fit with the goals of the individualized career development plan.

To be sure, McConnell praised the “tremendous progress” made by the state, including the closure earlier this year of the last sheltered workshop. He also heard about increases in supported employment, the growth of a quality improvement unit aimed at assuring all services meet high standards, and cooperation among state officials and private providers. Providers have said in recent months that their working relationship with state officials is better than it has been in many years.

At the same time, problems persist in finding jobs for young adults and in providing high quality personalized support services for non-work activities that typically take up the majority of individuals’ time, according to the testimony McConnell heard.

Continuing concerns about inadequate funding surfaced during the Oct. 30 hearing when the independent monitor, Charles Moseley, described a visit he and another consultant had with state officials and 16 providers in early August.

In a report filed with the Court hours before the hearing, Moseley said “significant numbers” of the providers indicated that they continue to run deficits in key areas and that funding allocations for individual services are insufficient to cover the costs of the services that must be provided.

Among major barriers to providing services, 94 percent cited transportation, 88 percent pointed to a lack of funding and complicated billing procedures for reimbursement, and 69 percent highlighted high staff turnover and poor job retention.

All these factors become particularly problematic when the state and the federal government are asking providers to undertake more staff training to gain expertise in the principles and practice of individualization, to enroll more young adults as clients, and to provide individualized support in the community as each of their charges goes to different job sites and engages in non-work activities in various places.

According to the consent decree, all young adults who left high school between 2013 and 2016 – those seeking adult services for the first time - were to be offered employment by July 1, 2016. But the state still hasn’t fulfilled that requirement, even after the deadline was extended to Sept. 30 of this year.

Moseley reported that on Sept. 29, the state had achieved 77 percent of that goal, or 257 job placements out of an “employment census” of 334 young adults.

Victoria Thomas, the DOJ lawyer, said she believes the state is using effective strategies to reach out to the remaining young adults and will monitor the situation.

She said DOJ lawyers visited the Birch Academy at Mount Pleasant High School recently and while they were generally delighted with the transformation, they were surprised to learn “how few high school students exited directly into supported employment.”

Students at the Birch Academy are protected by the predecessor to the 2014 statewide consent decree, called the Interim Settlement Agreement. The agreement, signed in 2013, was limited to addressing the use of the Birch high school program as a feeder to a now-defunct sheltered workshop in North Providence called Training Through Placement.

Thomas said that, according to the Interim Settlement Agreement, students who turn 18 should have the support they need to make the transition to work or actually hold a job while they are still in school.

Thomas said she wants to address the transition issue in the time remaining for the Interim Settlement Agreement, which is to end July 1, 2020.

All parties to the settlement must be in “substantial compliance” with the Interim Settlement Agreement a year before it expires. What substantial compliance looks like might be different for the state than for the Providence School Department, said Thomas, telling the judge that the DOJ will prepare some recommendations on the matter.

The city has met virtually every target set out by the Interim Settlement Agreement and earned McConnell’s praise. “Keep it up,” he said.

The state is responsible to the court for the work done by the private service providers under the terms of both the Interim Settlement Agreement and the statewide consent decree.

The providers’ performance got mixed reviews from Moseley and another consultant, William Ashe, who in early October analyzed a small random sample of plans, looking for the degree to which they were individualized and how they compared to the actual services provided.

The consultants expected the providers to use a guide on “person-centered thinking” developed by the Sherlock Center on Disabilities at Rhode Island College to formulate plans that put a particular person’s needs, preferences, and goals at the center of the planning process.

In 10 of the 17 plans, participants chose non-work activities from a menu of offerings that rotated on a weekly schedule, according to Ashe. But this kind of choice is not considered “person-centered” because the participants were not able to consider the the full range of opportunities available in the community.

“It is fair to say that the implementation of person-centered planning remains a work in progress where there has been significant but uneven advances in the development of person-centered planning practices. There remains a significant amount of work yet to be done,” Ashe wrote.

He found other instances in which plans indicated individuals had significant problems in communication. But neither the plans nor the actual services addressed ways in which communication could be improved.

“Frequently, there were clear instances of personal preference identified in the planning process that did not appear to be reflected in the services that were actually happening, Ashe said.

For example, one man indicated he wanted to learn to read and use a computer, but none of the goals written in his plan responded to that request.

Some of the plans reviewed were for clients of Easter Seals Rhode Island, formerly Community Work Services, an agency that nearly lost its license to operate in 2017 but has made a dramatic turnaround during the last year.

Ashe said “there are still very substantial steps that need to be taken in order to get this organization to an acceptable level of “person-centeredness” and to some extent, the same applies to other agencies.

Agencies should “diversify” the way that integrated day services are provided, he said.

From what Ashe observed, he said, it felt like community agencies like the YMCA and a bowling alley were becoming “a little bit like a day program” as staff and clients from one or more service providers gathered in the same place at the same time.

At the bowling alley, staff from several agencies sat together with their clipboards and watched the bowlers, Ashe said.

Based on a review of documents and direct observations, Ashe said, “there is a significant ongoing need for continued training on person-centered planning with an emphasis on how to take a plan and put it into action.”

“A good person-centered plan by itself does not produce good person-centered outcomes. How to individualize and implement these plans needs to be a focus for training,” Ashe concluded.

Read the full monitor’s report here.

RI Project Sustainability's Plan For Enhanced DD Services Was "Cover" For Budget Cuts - Testimony

By Gina Macris

Louis DiPalma, Chairman of Project Sustainability Commission Photo By Anne PETERS

Project Sustainability, introduced in Rhode Island in 2011 as a method for enhancing individualized services for adults with developmental disabilities, instead has diminished the quality of their lives.

That assessment set the stage Oct. 9 for deliberations of a Senate-sponsored commission charged with studying Rhode Island’s past and present system of developmental disability services, with the aim of designing a better future.

At the same time, the chairman of the 19-member panel, Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown, emphasized that the purpose of the commission is not to assign blame but to learn from the past and present to figure out how to best move forward. The commission must report to the Senate by March 1.

Project Sustainability was “a well-manicured statement to cover up” cuts in funding and services, said Tom Kane, CEO of AccessPoint RI, one of three dozen private agencies serving adults with developmental disabilities in Rhode Island.

Kim Einloth Testifies

Project Sustainability had a “major impact on the quality of service we were able to deliver,” said Kim Einloth, a senior director at Perspectives Corporation, one of Rhode Island’s largest service providers. She said the community-based program of day services was forced to put people in large groups, lay off specialists like occupational and speech therapists and discontinue consulting services with physical therapists.

Gloria Quinn, executive director of West Bay Residential Services, said she noticed immediately that the disabilities system was “demoralized, decreased and degraded” when she returned to Rhode Island after a nine-year absence in 2013. When Quinn moved out of state in 2004, she said, Rhode Island was one of the top-ranked states nationwide for its programs for adults with developmental disabilities. Quinn sits on the commission.

In a meeting that lasted about 90 minutes, the commission covered a broad range of topics related to Project Sustainability and the controversies linked to it: inadequate overall funding, depressed worker wages, and an assessment used – or misused - to determine individual allocations for services.

The planning and execution of Project Sustainability has been well documented, primarily by Burns & Associates, healthcare consultants hired by the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) in 2010.

DiPalma said that from what he’s seen, Burns & Associates was “charged with providing a plan, and the state chose to do something different.”

Rebecca Boss, the current director of BHDDH, reviewed the history of Project Sustainability, designed to bring uniformity to funding for specific services and enable families to make informed choices about services. Project Sustainability aimed to use data gathered through new funding methods to create incentives for services to be delivered in the most integrated setting possible, she said.

“Change is hard, and even with perfect planning, it would not result in everyone’s needs being met,” Boss said.

“I think everyone knows” that the current administration – including Governor Gina Raimondo, Kerri Zanchi, the Director of Developmental Disabilities, herself, “is committed to working with our stakeholders” to figure out “where do we go from here,” said Boss.

“Many may have different views of history, as is often the case,” said Boss, a commission member.

Kane, of AccessPoint, said he didn’t want his anger about Project Sustainability to reflect the way he regards the current administration. The working relationship service providers now have with the BHDDH administration, he said, is “better than we’ve had in a very, very long time.”

Tom Kane Chats After The Commission Meeting

The plans for Project Sustainability “talked about individualizing services and moving toward person-centeredness and all of the lovely buzz words,” said Kane, but the rhetoric really described “a system we already had that got dismantled.”

While Project Sustainability talked about individualization, inclusion and community support, the regulations governing developmental disability services “were always about center-based group activity.”

“Finally, under this administration, the regulations have been put forward that will put back the flexibility we need,” Kane said. The new regulations have passed a public comment period and are to be finalized by the end of the year.

Funding, however, has a long way to go to support the kinds of changes providers, families, and consumers want, by all accounts.

Commission member Andrew McQuaide zeroed in on historical funding of developmental disability services.

McQuaide said that developmental disability spending had been on a downward trend in Rhode Island since 1993.That was the year before the last residents left the Ladd School, the state’s only institution for those with intellectual challenges.

Citing According to Burns & Associates, McQuaide said:

• Between 1993 and 2008, Rhode Island’s expenditures for developmental disabilities decreased by 29.5 percent at the same time the national rate increased by 17.8 percent.

• Rhode Island is only one of 14 states to report a reduction between 2007 and 2009 in per-person expenditure, a decrease of 4 percent at the same time the national trend registered a 5.6 percent increase.

McQuaide also said that anecdotal information indicates about half the state’s private providers were reporting operating deficits in 2009, ill-preparing them to absorb the additional funding cuts that came along with Project Sustainability.

An overview prepared by the Senate Fiscal Office showed that actual spending on developmental disabilities, including both state and federal Medicaid funds, dropped $26.2 million in the fiscal year that began July 1, 2011 when compared to spending during the previous 12 months.

The overview shows that, adjusted for inflation, the current budget still has not caught up to the spending reach of the developmental disability system in the year before Project Sustainability was enacted.

Chart courtesy of RI SENATE FISCAL OFFICE

Prior to Project Sustainability, private agencies negotiated an annual sum for each individual in their care.

The new system generated standard reimbursement rates for each of 18 different services that agencies were authorized to provide.

Kane noted that from the outset, the funding for Project Sustainability was not designed to cover all of the actual costs of private providers, almost all of whom had submitted extensive financial data to the state.

A BHDDH memo for rate-setting that the department sent to the General Assembly noted that the reimbursement rates eventually adopted for Project Sustainability were 17 to 19 percent below “benchmark rates” which Burns & Associates calculated from the median wage for direct care jobs - $13.97 an hour.

The state could not afford more, the memo said, citing the poor economy at the time.

The memo said the lower reimbursement rates were calculated by reducing the allowances for fringe benefits for workers and in some cases, cutting transportation and program expenses.

Kane, who is familiar with the rates in the memo and other Burns & Associates documents, said providers were “actually told in a meeting, ’We’ll see what this (the benchmark wage) costs but we won’t actually bring this to the legislature because they’ll laugh at us.’

“I don’t understand why the expenditure of well over a million dollars on Burns & Associates wasn’t taken seriously enough” to put forward actual expenditures “and let the legislature decide whether it was appropriate,” Kane said.

McQuaide, meanwhile, quoted from the memo. “We did not reduce our assumptions for the level of staffing hours required to serve individuals. In other words, we are forcing the providers to stretch their dollars without compromising the level of services to individuals,” the memo said. See related article

McQuaide said the experience of the last seven years has shown that it was a “fiction” to think the system of private providers would be forced to implement Project Sustainability without compromising services.

The state has a separate system of group homes for adults with developmental disabilities which has not been subject to rules or the pay cuts that came with Project Sustainability. Instead, the workers are unionized state employees with full benefits.

Donna Martin and Andrew McQuaide

In the privately-run system, McQuaide said, the wages paid direct care workers still don’t reach the original $13.97 per hour “benchmark”, or median-pay rate, calculated by Burns & Associates.

The most recent data available indicates that the average entry wage for direct care workers is $11.37 an hour. It comes from a survey of member agencies of the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island (CPNRI) conducted last February, according to Donna Martin, executive director of the trade association, which represents about two thirds of service providers in Rhode Island. Martin said she is in the process of updating the figure.

Martin, a commission member, told the panel that CPNRI has met with the BHDDH leadership and representatives of Governor Raimondo’s office and the Office of Management and Budget to review current provider reimbursements in comparison to an extensive menu of rates envisioned by Burns & Associates in planning Project Sustainability. BHDDH, OMB, and the Governor have already planning a budget proposal for the next fiscal year.

DiPalma said Burns & Associates originally wanted to advance a “competitive” average wage of $15.46 an hour.

Addressing wage inequities will be a critical focus of the commission’s work, he said. Two years ago, DiPalma started a campaign to raise direct care wages to $15 an hour over five budget cycles. Massachusetts already pays its direct care workers a $15 hourly rate, and many Rhode Islanders find they don’t have to move to take advantage of these higher-paying positions at agencies that are an easy commute from their homes, DiPalma said.

Another source of rancor over the last several years has been the assessment used to determine individual funding levels under the terms of Project Sustainability – the Supports Intensity Scale (SIS), which was updated in November, 2016.

Kane has said data compiled by Burns & Associates indicate the original version of the SIS was used to cut individual funding. See related article

A. Anthony Antosh

Even though the SIS has been revised, the state’s top academic researcher in developmental disabilities, A. Anthony Antosh, told the commission that using the SIS as a funding tool violates the original intent of the instrument as an aid for professionals designing individual programs of support for persons with disabilities.

Antosh, a commission member, is the retiring Director of the Sherlock Center on Disabilities at Rhode Island College.

His comments apparently prompted Kane to recall another moment in a Project Sustainability planning meeting in which Burns & Associates’ human services partner praised the multi-faceted assessment providers were using at the time to figure out how much funding a particular person needed. In each case, the assessment took into account intellectual capacity, responses in various situations and potential risks.

That Burns & Associates partner, the Human Services Research Institute of Oregon, wrote a memo to the General Assembly saying that “ ‘resource allocation’ should never be thought of as mostly an exercise involving the assessment and simple service delivery.”

Policy makers should also take into account the goals of the programs, such as increasing community integration or increasing employment, before determining the array of services and rate schedules, HSRI said.

“Data collected by a measure such as the SIS is necessary,” the memo said, “but certainly not sufficient.”

The memo was condensed before it reached the General Assembly, and the recommendation against using the SIS alone to determine individual funding was eliminated,

RI General Assembly Candidates In Newport County Say They Support DD Worker Raises

By Gina Macris

A call for higher pay for direct service workers who assist persons with developmental disabilities ran like a thread through a General Assembly candidates’ forum in Newport Oct. 3, with several speakers saying better wages will help stabilize the system and improve quality.

Legislators urged an audience of about 25 to make their names and faces known at the State House to press this and other concerns when the General Assembly convenes again in January.

State Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Newport, Middletown, Little Compton and Tiverton, said that Rhode Island cannot transform services for adults with developmental disabilities on a budget that has the same buying power as it did in 2011.

In Fiscal Year 2011, Rhode Island spent about $242 million on developmental disabilities, DiPalma said. Adjusted for inflation, using the consumer price index, that’s equivalent to the $272 million currently budgeted for the state Division of Developmental Disabilities.

DiPalma offered a glimpse of the work ahead for a Senate-sponsored commission that will convene Tuesday, Oct. 9 to begin discussing the current fee-for-service reimbursement system for private providers of supports to adults facing intellectual and developmental challenges.

The reimbursement system, called “Project Sustainability,” was inaugurated in Fiscal Year 2012, along with cuts that slashed spending on developmental disabilities from $242.6 million to $216.5 million, according to state figures.

Since 2014, the state has been under pressure from the U.S. Department of Justice to end an overreliance on sheltered workshops and other segregated care for adults with developmental disabilities, and instead emphasize competitive employment and integrated non-work activities to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act.

At the Oct. 3 forum, DiPalma said the current practice of awarding individual funding authorizations according to the “level” of a person’s lack of independence is “just wrong” when successful appeals of individual awards have resulted in supplemental expenditures of up to $25 million a year for legitimate additional services on a case-by-case basis.

DiPalma, the chairman of the commission, said the panel will review every aspect of “Project Sustainability - what it is, how did we get there, and where do we want to go? What are the gaps?” The commission will meet at 3:30 p.m. Oct. 9 in Room 313 of the State House.

Rep. Deborah Ruggiero, D-Jamestown and Middletown, who has six years’ experience on the House Finance Committee, said people with disabilities want the exact same thing that people without disabilities seek – meaningful lives.

“But I’m not sure it’s a one-size-fits-all model, “ she said. “The whole system needs a good 20,000-foot overview.”

“It’s not right that people can make more money at McDonald’s than they can supervising people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, “ Ruggiero said.

One consequence of “Project Sustainability” has been double-digit cuts in wages, which also have derailed benefits such as health insurance, and opportunities for career advancement offered workers by private service-provider agencies. The wage cuts destabilized an entire workforce, which now averages a turnover rate of at least 33 percent a year.

Rep. Dennis Canario, D-Portsmouth, Tiverton and Little Compton, himself the father of someone with developmental disabilities, said that people generally “don’t understand the detrimental effect” of staff turnover on the individuals they assist.

Workers must have “expertise” to keep their clients on an even keel, particularly in some cases where clients are “very involved,” He said that It takes “expertise to turn situations around” or to keep individuals focused on the job at hand.

“When they get up in the morning, they need something to look forward to,” he said of people with disabilities. “We need to provide that type of day to our friends with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Together we can come up with the answers and solutions.”

“Pay inequity is a serious problem,” Canario said. “You’re not going to attract someone highly qualified” for $11 an hour,” he said. (The average pay for direct support workers is slightly less than $11.50 an hour.)

Connecticut and Massachusetts “are way ahead of us,” he said.

DiPalma noted that Massachusetts has already negotiated a minimum $15 hourly wage for direct care workers who are members of the Service Employees International Union. Many of the workers in nearby Massachusetts towns have trained in Rhode Island and still live in Rhode Island, he said.

DiPalma has sponsored a campaign to get a $15 hourly wage in five years, but it stalled in the last session of the General Assembly, when the developmental disability system was threatened with an $18 million cut in services. In the end, the legislature restored the status quo, but no gains were made.

Nevertheless, advocates deserve a “great round of applause for restoring that funding,” said Sen. Dawn Euer, D-Jamestown and Newport. She and others, including Rep. Kenneth Mendonca, R-Portsmouth and Middletown, urged them to keep it up.

Sen. James Seveney, D-Portsmouth, Bristol and Tiverton, signaled that he and his colleagues will again be pushing for a wage increase for direct care workers in the 2019 General Assembly session.

With the 2014 federal consent decree driving more integrated employment and community –based activities, the state must invest in additional transportation to make those opportunities a reality, said Euer. Others echoed her concern about transportation.

Terri Cortvriend, the Democratic candidate for Mendonca’s seat in the House, said she wanted to learn more about developmental disability services, particularly whether individuals and families are satisfied with the greater emphasis on competitive employment. Cortvriend currently chairs the Portsmouth School Committee.

Susan Vandal, a member of the audience, said families who have a child with a developmental disability want a system that allows them a “single point of entry” that begins early intervention for infants and toddlers and takes them seamlessly through the school years into adult services.

Parents must now jump through too many hoops, particularly in the transition from school to adult services, she said. Transition from high school to the adult system is also one of the prime concerns of an independent court monitor overseeing implementation of the consent decree.

Addressing the audience, Canario said legislators “need your help so we can make recommendations on how to fix a broken system.”

“A lot of parents are in the dark and don’t know what to do,” he said. Sometimes they are misled, with plans for services that are on paper but don’t become reality.”

The forum held at the Newport campus of the Community College of Rhode Island, was sponsored by the Newport County Parents Advocacy Group and Rhode Island FORCE (Families Organized for Reform, Change, and Empowerment.) RI FORCE streamed the event live and has posted the recording on its Facebook page, here.

RI Project Sustainability Study Commission To Meet October 9 For First Session

By Gina Macris

A special Commission of the Rhode Island Senate will hold its first meeting Tuesday, Oct. 9 to begin studying the impact of “Project Sustainability” on services for adults with developmental disabilities, its chairman, Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown, has announced. The meeting is open to the public.

Project Sustainability is the name of the fee-for-service reimbursement system for Medicaid-funded supports for adults with intellectual challenges that was enacted by the General Assembly in 2011. 

The system features a standardized assessment of each client’s needs which is then translated by an algorithm into one of five levels of individual funding.  It was introduced as a more equitable way of allocating funds than the previous method, in which providers negotiated flat rates for each client in their care. 

But Project Sustainability, which was accompanied by significant budget cuts, has been controversial from the start. The state first calculated a myriad of distinct reimbursement rates based on existing median wages for direct care workers. From there it slashed the rates an average of 17 percent in the budget for the 2011-2012 fiscal year, citing a poor economy.   

Providers were forced to cut wages drastically, leading to an instability in the workforce that persists today. Advocates say the high turnover prevents the state from achieving the goals of a 2014 federal civil rights decree that followed in the wake of Project Sustainability.

The U.S. Department of Justice criticized the state for incentivizing segregated care in day centers or sheltered workshops that can be managed with a minimum of staff. An over-reliance on this type of care violates the integration mandate of the Americans With Disabilities Act, the DOJ found.  

DiPalma, the commission chairman, said the 19-member commission includes two consumers, other advocates, providers and representatives of the executive branch of state government. The commission will accept public comment at every meeting, he said.

The first meeting will cover the history of Project Sustainability and spell out the goals of the commission, according to a statement issued in DiPalma’s behalf. The meeting will begin at 3:30 p.m. Oct. 9 at the State House, but the room has not yet been selected, DiPalma said.

Challenging RI Consent Decree Deadline Looms Sept. 30 For Employment Of Young Adults With DD

By Gina Macris

The state of Rhode Island has already met or surpassed the 2018 supported employment goals for adults with developmental disabilities who were in sheltered workshops or segregated day programs when a federal civil rights consent decree was signed more than four years ago.

But it appears the state will not meet a looming Sept. 30 employment deadline for young people seeking adult services for the first time; specifically, 426 individuals who left high school special education programs between 2013 and  2016.

The prospect of the missed deadline – itself a two-year extension of the original -  suggests a lack of underlying funding, if not for specific employment–related services, then for the entire package of supports that newcomers usually seek when they look for an adult service provider.

For years, representatives of the three dozen private agencies reimbursed by the state Division of Developmental Disabilities (DDD) have told legislators that the amounts they are paid do not cover the actual costs of providing services.

Taking on new clients often means taking on additional debt, they have testified.

To be sure, DDD has pressed forward with reforms on a number of fronts, most prominently a program of enhanced reimbursement rates to private providers for supported employment services and performance payments for job placement and retention. The program was launched in January, 2017. 

 One agency that extended itself to embrace the new program, because officials believed it was the right thing to do, nevertheless ended the year with debt in that account in the high five figures, according to several sources.

In January of this year, the rules were relaxed to allow agencies to spend from the supported employment program to look for jobs for clients already on their caseload, providers have said.  

In 2018, young adult participation in the performance-based employment program  “has not significantly increased despite the increase in available funds for this population,” according to a second quarter report from the state to an independent court monitor in the consent decree case. The report has been obtained by Developmental Disability News.

The General Assembly initially allocated a total of $6.8 million in federal-state Medicaid funding that financed the supported employment program from January, 2017 through June, 2018, but more than half the money was not spent. At the end of June, BHDDH was scheduled to return to the state about $4.1 million, according to a House fiscal report.  State revenue accounts for about $2 million of the total.

As of June 30, a total of 231 young adults were employed, a figure that slightly exceeds the requirement that 50 percent of “youth exit” members have part-time jobs by that date.  

But it has taken the state four years to reach the half-way mark as it works toward the consent decree goal of full employment for young adults, leaving only three months to find jobs for the remaining half of the “youth exit” population – nearly 200 individuals. 

By comparison, the state has found part-time jobs for a total of 334 adults in segregated day programs – more than double the target for Jan. 1, 2019. In addition, 203 individuals who once worked in sheltered workshops now work in the community.  Those placements slightly exceed the 200 the consent decree requires by New Year’s Day.  (Taken together, the employment figures in the various categories do not include 18 clients whose past placements count toward consent decree goals but who no longer receive state services.)

RI DIVISIon of Developmental Disabilities

Among all those who got jobs through the supported employment program, 81 percent have remained employed for at least six months, according to the state.

The state also closed its last sheltered workshop, at the John E. Fogarty Center of North Providence, in the second quarter of the year, according to the state’s report. All participants moved either to competitive employment or day programs, a DDD spokeswoman said.  

While the supported employment program is only about jobs, young adults seeking a service provider for the first time tend to want something else that is more comprehensive, particularly since they work only an average of about 14 hours a week, according to the state’s figures.

They and their families generally want one provider to give them an array of work and non-work supports that take into account all their needs and preferences.

Some choose to bypass a service agency altogether and manage their own program of services, hiring staff and arranging schedules while a fiscal intermediary pays the bills from a funding authorization approved by the state.  Self-directed individuals have reported difficulties getting services from the supported employment program.

Of about 500 so-called “self-directed” individuals and families, it’s not clear how many run their own programs by choice and how many first sought and could not find an agency to provide services appropriate to their needs. The number of self-directed programs has grown in the last few years, by all accounts. In all, about 3,700 adults receive services funded by DDD.  

The impetus for the supported employment program came from an order issued in May, 2016, by  U.S. District Court Judge John J. McConnell, Jr., who presides over the case.

But the supported employment program now in place does not address basic funding mechanisms for adults with developmental disabilities, which, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, incentivize a segregated system of day services. The DOJ criticized both the funding and regulatory structures in the 2014 findings that laid the groundwork for the consent decree.

During the past year, BHDDH has engaged providers, families and advocates in an effort to rewrite DDD regulations, with an eye toward giving consumers of services and their providers greater flexibility to individualize programs and help meet the “integration mandate” of the Americans With Disabilities Act, which the consent decree is meant to enforce.

The proposed changes were submitted late in 2017 to the Office of Regulatory Reform – part of the Office of Management and Budget – but the draft regulations have not yet been posted for public comment on the website of the Secretary of State. 

Kevin Savage, the licensing administrator at BHDDH, said August 21 he expects the Office of Regulatory Reform to complete its work and release the regulations any day.

The federal court monitor in the case, Charles Moseley, has often expressed concern about teenagers and young adults with developmental disabilities because, without appropriate supports, they are at risk for a life of isolation once they leave high school.

The 2014 consent decree originally required the state to find jobs for all members of the young adult, or “youth exit” category,  by July 1, 2016. When the deadline arrived, however, only 29 individuals had jobs in a group that, at that time, numbered 151. 

After the monitor,  Charles Moseley, ordered the state to make sure it counted all young adults who met eligibility requirements for adult services under state law, the size of the “youth exit” population ballooned. It is now 426.

McConnell, the presiding judge, extended the employment deadline for all young adults to 2018. He required half of them to have jobs by June 30 – a goal that has been met – and the remaining 50 percent to find work by Sept. 30.

Going forward, the state said in its report, DDD is planning amendments to contracts with providers to use unspent supported employment money from the first half of the year, as well as other strategies to improve service to the young adult group.

One promising initiative, say state officials, is a cooperative agreement involving the Department of Labor and Training (DLT) and as many as 11 providers of developmental disability services, the Sherlock Center on Developmental Disabilities at Rhode Island College, and the Rhode Island Developmental Disabilities Council to forge relationships with business and generate at least 77 new jobs. The Business Innovation Factory will provide enhanced technical assistance for the overall project, financed through workforce development funds administrated by DLT.

DDD also raised the possibility that some young adults may ultimately choose not to work, a decision that must be documented in a “variance” to the state’s Employment First policy for adults with developmental disabilities. Employment – and the variance process – will be discussed at a public forum Sept. 11 at the East Providence Senior Activity Center, 610 Waterman Ave., East Providence, on Sept. 11.

RI DD Services Get A "Status Quo" Budget, But Can It Keep Up With Client Needs And Consent Decree?

By Gina Macris

With Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo signing the $9.6 billion budget bill into law June 22, the service system for adults with developmental disabilities averts a crisis in the fiscal year beginning July 1, and instead continues the status quo.

That is to say, the system is still struggling to meet the needs of some 4,000 Rhode Island adults with developmental disabilities, including those who are seeking services for the first time.

Higher-than-expected revenue estimates in May enabled the House and the Senate to restore a number of reductions in the human services which Raimondo had proposed in January, including about $18 million in developmental disabilities.  On June 20, the Senate ratified the House version of the budget and sent it to the governor.

Until the state’s intent to restore the funds for developmental disability services became clear in mid-May, an independent federal court monitor had been preparing to make recommendations to U.S. District Court Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. for an order to ensure adequate funding..

It was the second time since a federal civil rights consent decree was signed in 2014 that a court order, or the threat of one, has surfaced during the budget-making season at the State House. There’s no reason to believe that the monitor won’t re-visit that idea next year if funding for developmental disability services fails to keep pace with the stepped-up demands of the consent decree, which requires the state to shift from segregated services to those offering integrated, community-based opportunities by 2024.

One goal illustrates the challenges. The state is to have part-time jobs by Sept. 30 for all young adults who left high school between 2013 and 2016 and who who want to work, but with three months remaining until the deadline, those with jobs number 235, or 55 percent, of a population of 425, according to figures released last week.

The budget does include $1.5 million in technical assistance for private providers of developmental disability services trying to adjust to integrated services for clients, according to Carmela Corte, the chief financial officer of the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH). Those are federal-state Medicaid dollars that will be taken from the allocation for direct services.   

A relatively small number of adults with developmental disabilities who choose to use their funding authorizations from BHDDH for in-home care will be able to pay workers 10 percent more, which amounts to about $620,000 in the budget, Corte said.

By The Numbers 

The General Assembly also adjusted the current budget to close out the fiscal year, adding about $15.6 million to cover an operating deficit as recommended by Raimondo, who acknowledged the shortfall deficit as a one-time event.

The overall numbers in developmental disabilities:

•     $272.1 million for Fiscal 2018, which ends June 30    
• ·   $271.4 million for Fiscal 2019, which begins July 1

Administrators, however, tend to work on a day-to-day basis with an “operating budget,” which includes only federal and state Medicaid funds available for providing direct services.

For the current fiscal year, federal-state Medicaid dollars are budgeted at $269.8 million.  For the fiscal year beginning July 1, the federal-state Medicaid total is $269.2 million.

No Raises For Frontline Workers

One big-ticket item missing from the next budget is a pay increase for employees of private service providers who work directly with adults with developmental disabilities.  The underpaid workforce is sure to be a major issue for advocates when the General Assembly reconvenes in January.

Incremental raises for these workers during three budget cycles have allowed them to keep just ahead of the minimum wage, in a range which puts private service providers in competition with the same pool of workers as fast-food restaurants and other retail businesses. 

Including the most recent raises, in 2017, the average direct care worker is paid about $11.50 an hour. The minimum wage, which increased from $9.60 to $10.10 on Jan. 1, is due for another bump, to $10.50, on Jan. 1, 2019.

Before the General Assembly cut $26 million from the developmental disabilities budget in 2011, the average pay at some private agencies serving adults with developmental disabilities averaged close to $15 an hour, with comprehensive health insurance and other benefits.  Career ladders afforded front-line workers opportunities for advancement.

Since then, the workforce has become unstable, with employers unable to fill one out of six jobs, according to the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island, a trade organization. Turnover ranges from about 30 percent to about 75 percent, depending on the agency. In some cases, workers leave direct care work for other jobs with similar pay but much less responsibility. In other cases, they leave for the same type of work at better pay in Massachusetts, which is scheduled to offer a minimum of $15 an hour for such work July 1.

Budget Questions At Public Forum

The issue of worker pay surfaced at a public forum hosted by the Division of Developmental Disabilities (DDD) June 18 at the University of Rhode Island, with one parent lamenting the lack raises in the year ahead.

Kerri Zanchi                         Photo By Anne Peters

Kerri Zanchi, Director of Developmental Disabilities, and other staff of the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH), explained various aspects of the budget and outlined initiatives intended to help the service system in the long run.

Asked whether the “status quo” funding approved by the General Assembly would result in cost overruns in the coming fiscal year, Zanchi didn’t say.  Instead she emphasized that DDD must use its data “every single month” to support its projections and “really understand what our needs are going to look like.”  

But BHDDH projections of need for developmental disability services don’t figure in the semi-annual Caseload Estimating Conference that comes up with figures for Medicaid entitlement costs.

And the state Budget Office does not take actual costs into account in making recommendations to the governor, a spokeswoman said earlier this year.  Rather it uses “estimated growth rates in the cost of providing services,” according to Brenna McCabe. She did not say who makes the estimates or otherwise elaborate.

The new budget doesn’t allow for increases in individual funding authorizations – one of the chief causes of the cost overruns which prompted the BHDDH request for additional funding in the budget cycle now winding down.

The governor cited higher “acuity” in acknowledging that increased per-person costs fueled a projected $15 million deficit in developmental disability costs in the fiscal year ending June 30. That factor, however, was ignored in her presentation of Fiscal 2019 budget that begins July 1.

Ever since November, 2016, there has been an upward trend in individual authorizations, something  that is expected to continue for several years, until all clients have been evaluated at least once using a revised standardized interview that is considered more accurate than the previous one. Both the original interview, called the Supports Intensity Scale (SIS), and the revised one, called the SIS-A, were developed by the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.  

Budget Language Opens Door To Innovation

The budget contains language that responds in to a variety of concerns about who manages resources available to adults with developmental disabilities and how providers are paid. 

It gives BHDDH the required state legislative authority to apply for a so-called “Health Home” and an “Alternate Payment Method” to create pilot programs for changes in case management and provider reimbursement better suited to integrated, community-based services that are tailored to individual preferences and needs, as required by the Americans With Disabilities Act.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) hold that neither the states, as funding authorities, nor the services providers themselves can also be responsible for designing and managing individualized programs of activities without conflicts of interests.

States should have another disinterested party in the role of case manager, according to CMS.

The Health Home is the CMS name for the third-party case management organization that would oversee individual clients’ Medicaid and Medicare services, while the Alternate Payment Method allows states to explore changes to the usual fee-for-service reimbursement to private providers.

 Zanchi and Kimberly Reynolds, BHDDH administrator of financial management, explained the goals of the applications at the public forum June 18.

Reynolds described the Health Home as a “one-stop shop where individuals and families may get assistance in managing their services.  BHDDH has three health homes, mostly in the substance abuse and mental health areas.”

By way of background, Zanchi said that the idea for applying for a Health Home grew out of collective thinking in DDD during the last year about ways to put its clients in the driver’s seat in shaping their activities, or as she put it, developing “person-centered practice.”

For one thing, the system can’t be truly “person-centered” without case management that is free of conflicts of interest, Zanchi said.

She also said a pilot program for an Alternate Payment Method might generate solutions to problems faced by the current fee-for-service reimbursement system, which poses challenges to providers trying to get their clients into the community in meaningful ways.

The fee-for service system requires providers to bill in 15-minute increments, but only when a client is actually receiving services. It doesn’t allow providers to plan ahead, because reimbursement depends on day-to-day attendance at a particular activity, without exceptions for occasions such as client’s medical appointments, illnesses, or vacations.

As the state moves to a system with greater consumer control and consumer empowerment, Zanchi said, providers will need to be able to count on more staff to get their clients into the community.

Despite the consent decree, the reimbursement system is still geared to funding programs held in facilities like sheltered workshops and day centers, where one staff member can keep an eye on larger groups of individuals than is possible in the community.

Zanchi and Reynolds each said they want the public to participate in drawing up the applications for the Health Home and Alternate Payment Method.

“We have a lot of work to do in a very quick time frame, and like everything else we’ve done, we’re going to do it with our constituents,”  Zanchi said.

The state anticipates submitting the applications, receiving decisions, and beginning pilot programs by next Jan. 1, according to Zanchi. CMS would pay 90 cents on the dollar to support the pilot programs for a maximum of two years.

Flyers distributed at the meeting gave a schedule for public meetings on the applications, but the schedule was put on hold. Reynolds said she is the contact person for the Health Home. She can be reached at 401-462-3941 or at Kimberly.Reynolds@bhddh.ri.gov 

RI House Finance Committee Recommends Restoring DD Services To Current Levels

By Gina Macris

RI HOUSE SPEAKER Nicholas A. Mattiello  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Gina Macris

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RI Gov Pledges To Support "Current Level" Of DD Services In FY 19; No Fiscal Details Yet

By Gina Macris

Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo says her administration is committed to maintaining “the current level of services” for adults with developmental disabilities in order to meet the demands of a 2014 consent decree between the state and federal government.

But in a letter to a federal court monitor in the consent decree case, the governor did not spell out how much money the administration believes the state should spend.

The consent decree is a 2014 agreement between the state and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) which requires Rhode Island to correct violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act by enabling adults with intellectual or developmental challenges to seek competitive employment and enjoy community-based, integrated non-work activities.

In the letter to the monitor, Raimondo wrote: “I will continue to work collaboratively with the General Assembly on all funding recommendations, including those supporting efforts under the Consent Decree.”  

Following better-than-expected revenue projections issued May 10, both House and Senate leaders said that at a minimum, they support restoration of an $18.4 million reduction in reimbursements to private service providers that Raimondo has proposed for the budget cycle beginning July 1.

The consent decree monitor, Charles Moseley, had sought three specific assurances from Raimondo, in the form of a letter or statement to U.S. District Court Judge John J. McConnell Jr.

Moseley asked that the letter or statement say that the budget would:

•  “be re-set to reflect current FY 2018 expenditure and service levels”
•  “continue to be revised throughout FY 2019 as needed to fully fund the provision of services”           consistent with requirements of the consent decree
•  provide “sufficient personnel resources” to the Division of Developmental Disabilities to   “carry out  quality improvement activities consistent with Consent Decree requirements.”

Raimondo’s letter to Moseley, dated May 14, contains no details about any budget changes she may be planning. Nor does it mention quality improvement activities. 

On May 18, a spokeswoman for Raimondo said that “increasing funding for developmental disability support services is one shared priority for which she (the governor) continues to advocate as we further engage in discussions with the General Assembly about the final budget."

Asked whether the governor supports the employment of adults with disabilities as one of the state's workforce solutions, the governor's spokeswoman pointed out the new Real Pathways RI program. It is a workforce investment initiative that focuses on job-seekers who face various barriers to employment. Among the public, private, and non-profit organizations that participate in the program are four providers of developmental disability services, who are working with Home Depot and CVS to match their clients to jobs. 

Moseley had requested a statement from the governor on her position as he prepared to make recommendations to McConnell about what court action, if any, might be needed to ensure that compliance with the consent decree moves forward.

At the most recent court hearing April 10, the judge directed Moseley to find out if there was consensus among state officials and DOJ lawyers about a course of action the court might take to ensure enough funding. Failing such an agreement, McConnell said, he would hold an evidentiary hearing to lay the groundwork for a court order.

Moseley has concluded that Raimondo’s proposed budget, as it now stands, is insufficient to continue to support the modest salary increases to direct support workers put forward by Raimondo and approved by the General Assembly in the last two years. In addition, it would not allow the state to “continue services at current levels,” he said.

The monitor described his efforts to get a sense of the state’s position a  letter to Eric Beane, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, dated May 9. That was a day before the state’s revenue estimating conference concluded that revenues were projected to exceed previous estimates by $135 million through the end of Fiscal 2019.

A week earlier, on May 2, the director of the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) did not dispute the monitor’s conclusions about the inadequacy of the proposed budget for the next fiscal year, Moseley wrote to Beane.

But the director, Rebecca Boss, “affirmed governor’s commitment to fully fund Consent Decree activities during FY (Fiscal Year) 19 and said that no rate cuts in reimbursements or spending reductions were being proposed,” according to Moseley.

“She noted that the Governor had demonstrated a history of including supplemental funding to the DD (developmental disabilities) services budget when expenditures exceeded enacted amounts and would continue to do so if necessary,”  Moseley wrote.

On separate occasions, both Boss and Beane said assurances about the state’s support of the consent decree could be sought from the governor, Moseley recalled.

For some time, Moseley has said that the Division of Developmental Disabilities needs four fulltime inspectors to conduct onsite reviews of all three dozen private service providers every two years and to ensure their services meet the standards of the consent decree.

He said Kerri Zanchi, director of developmental disabilities, and Kevin Savage, the BHDDH licensing administrator, “argued strongly” during a meeting with Moseley May 2 that two inspectors, or “surveyors” as they will be called, “would be sufficient to meet the need and ensure compliance” along with an data analyst and “other measures.”  Zanchi was to provide a subsequent written analysis of the rationale for the BHDDH approach.

In an earlier report to the monitor, BHDDH officials explained their plan for a centralized, departmental quality assurance unit. In the first year, the two surveyors would be supervised by Anne LeClerc, Associate Director of Program Performance in the Division of Developmental Disabilities, which is also to have the benefit of its own data analyst and a divisional operations manager.

In this initial year, the new “surveyors” will enable the division to rigorously analyze the effectiveness of its existing day services to better plan for future improvements, according to the state’s report to the monitor April 30.

In the second year, however, the surveyors will be assigned to a centralized quality management unit to connect the BHDDH investigatory unit with licensing and certification of private service providers, according to the state’s quarterly report. 

Raimondo's spokeswoman said she supports the BHDDH quality improvement plan. 

To date, there have been no filings in the court record indicating what Moseley will recommend to the judge.

To read Governor Raimondo's letter to the consent decree monitor, click here.

To read the consent decree monitor's letter to the Secretary of Health and Human Services click here.

DiPalma: RI DD Services Need More Than $18 Million To Continue Consent Decree Reforms

By Gina Macris

One of the Rhode Island Senate’s chief advocates for adults with developmental disabilities applauded the House and Senate consensus on restoring $18.4 million to reimbursements for private service providers but said that amount is not enough to enable the state to continue transforming its programs to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Reacting to the latest positive revenue estimates, Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown, said May 11 that reversing a cut planned by Governor Gina Raimondo for the fiscal year beginning July 1 would be a “phenomenal step forward.” 

But DiPalma, who has closely followed developmental disability issues, said he hopes the General Assembly can find additional funds so that the state can continue to invest in the goals of a 2014 civil rights federal consent decree and also, for a third consecutive year,  raise wages for direct care workers who provide services to adults with developmental disabilities. 

Restoring $18.4 million to private providers, and an additional $3 million to a state-run network of group homes, would bring the developmental disabilities budget to about $272.2 million. That reflects the pace of spending for the current fiscal year.

DiPalma said developmental disabilities will need about $275 million to $280 million in federal and state Medicaid funding during the next fiscal year to continue the decade-long transformation of services from a segregated to an integrated model, as mandated by 2014 consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice. 

DiPalma’s remarks came the day after the state Revenue Estimating Conference concluded May 10 that revenues for the next 14 months are expected to run a total of nearly $135 million ahead of estimates made in November.  That total includes an additional $75.5 million for the fiscal year ending June 30 and another $59.4 million in Fiscal 2019, which begins July 1.

The $18.4 million gap in reimbursements to private providers for Fiscal 2019 refers tMo both federal and state Medicaid funds, with the federal government providing roughly 52 cents on the dollar.  That means the state would have to put up about $9 million to close the $18.4 million hole.

House Speaker Nicholas A. Mattiello and the President of the Senate, Dominick J. Ruggerio, issued separate statements saying they were pleased that revenues exceeded prior estimates. In recent days, they also have listed developmental disabilities as one of the priorities that must be addressed, although neither viewed the extra cash as a panacea, because of multiple unmet demands on the state budget. 

Mattiello’s statement said, “This offers some more options for us as we consider some very tough choices in our budget deliberations. I am committed to making sure we pass a responsible budget that addresses the critical needs of our citizens and continues to move the state forward.”

In addition, on May 11, he said the House “always” planned to address the $18.4 million gap between current spending for developmental disabilities and the governor’s proposal for the budget cycle beginning July 1.

Ruggerio, the Senate president, said, “As we work together to craft a responsible budget, it is important to consider that a significant portion of this increase is one-time revenue that may not continue in future years, and that there are significant gaps in the current budget proposal that need to be filled. However, the additional revenue does provide some flexibility to address Senate priorities such as funding for developmental disabilities care within the BHDDH budget and funding for DCYF.” Ruggerio referred to the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals, and to the Department of Children, Youth and Families.

While adequate funding is the most immediate issue, there are other regulatory matters that concern a federal court monitor and the BHDDH administration. The Senate has signaled it is open to change, both in the short term and the long run.

In a brief telephone interview May 11, Mattiello said he, too, is open to considering changes, although he did not get  into specifics.

“I know the needs are significant,” he said. “I’ve got constituents in the community that have developmentally challenged family members. These folks need help, and I’m very, very available to that.”

“I’m open to study and to doing things better,” Mattiello said. “The department (BHDDH) and the administration certainly can do things better.”

“These are complex issues,” Mattiello said.

The Senate has passed a resolution authorizing a 19-member commission to study the fee-for-service reimbursement structure, with a report due March 1, 2019.

In addition, the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services is to vote May 15 on a bill to change the timing of individual funding authorizations for developmental disability services from quarterly to an annual basis.

An independent federal court monitor in the consent decree case, administrators at BHDDH, and private service providers all have found the quarterly authorizations problematic for a variety of reasons.

Providers have said the quarterly authorization system does not allow them to do any long-range budgeting. Anecdotal accounts of families unable to find services indicate a tendency in recent years for providers to avoid taking on clients with complex and costly needs for fear of financial risk that they may not be to cover.

Meanwhile, the Director of Developmental Disabilities testified at a recent Senate Finance Committee meeting that quarterly authorizations are administratively burdensome. The 3700 individual authorizations in the division’s caseload must be entered manually in the state reimbursement system four times a year, said the director, Kerri Zanchi. 

At the same time, DiPalma, the first vice chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, noticed that in some years there are significant dips in the caseload numbers in April and October – as many as 145 or 150.  This timing coincides with the governor’s budget preparation process in the fall and the legislature’s refinement of the final figures in the spring.  In general, each client represents an average of $60,000 in federal-state Medicaid funding. 

One reason for that variability might be data entry errors, according to Donna Martin, executive director of the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island, a trade association of service providers.

The bill requiring annual authorizations says they are necessary to allow adults with developmental disabilities to plan their services in a “flexible manner consistent with their stated goals and plan of care,” in accordance with the principles of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Home and Community Based Services Final Rule. Among other things, the Final Rule requires service plans to be based on an individual’s needs and preferences.

The bill would not preclude the state from changing reimbursement rates to providers in the middle of a fiscal year, but they and their clients would have to receive 45 days’ notice.

RI Speaker: General Assembly Likely To Reverse $18 M Cut In DD Services Proposed By Governor

By Gina Macris 

It is likely the General Assembly will restore about $18 million in proposed cuts to private providers of developmental disability services in the budget cycle that begins July 1,” Rhode Island House Speaker Nicholas A. Mattiello said May 10.

In a video interview published by GoLocal Prov, Mattiello said:

“We have about $18 million in proposed cuts to the developmentally disabled community. I don’t want to speak for everybody, but I’m certainly going to strongly advocate for giving the money back and restoring it. I don’t think that’s an appropriate place to go for your cuts. And we were always planning on restoring those funds. I think that thinking is pretty universal.”

Mattiello was interviewed at the conclusion of the May Revenue Estimating Conference, which indicated revenues are running about $130 million to $135 million ahead of estimates for the current fiscal year and the next one, according to slightly differing preliminary news reports.  An official statement was not immediately available.

A spokesman for Mattiello added that the “budget will be finalized in the coming weeks, and there are no firm numbers yet, but the Speaker is committed to addressing the developmental disabilities issue in the budget.”

The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. William J. Conley,Jr., D-East Providence and Pawtucket, has taken a firm stand against the $18 million reduction in reimbursements to private providers proposed by Governor Gina Raimondo in January.

During a Senate Finance Committee hearing May 3, Conley framed the budgetary issue in terms of the civil rights of adults with developmental disabilities to have the assistance they need to enjoy services in their communities as spelled out in the Olmstead decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.

And that day for the first time, Rebecca Boss, director of the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals(BHDDH), acknowledged that governor’s recommended budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 would not allow the state to continue its compliance efforts with a 2014 federal consent decree based on the Olmstead decision.

For the fiscal year beginning July 1, Raimondo has proposed $250.8 million for developmental disabilities. That figure is $6.1 million less than the bottom line enacted by the General Assembly for the current fiscal year and a total of $21.4 million less than current spending levels.  Raimondo’s budget proposal would raise the current spending limit from $256.9 million to $272.2 million for the fiscal year ending June 30 to cover a cost overrun, treating it as a one-time event.  

In the BHDDH budget request to the governor last fall, Boss asked for a total of $278.8 million for developmental disabilities beginning July 1.

U.S. District Court Judge John J. McConnell, Jr., who presides over implementation of the consent decree, has made it clear over the last six months that he has a keen interest in the funding issue.

At the most court recent hearing April 10, an independent court monitor said he would draft recommendations for a proposed court order to ensure compliance with the consent decree

The monitor, Charles Moseley, was to first consult with the state and the U.S. Department of Justice to see if they could all reach consensus on the recommendations. Moseley’s report to the judge has not yet appeared in the court file.

But McConnell has received a letter from a parent asking him to “stop the governor’s plan to cut $18 million from I/DD (intellectual and developmental disabilities) services.”

Chris Torgovec has a son with autism who is living in a group home and has started to work a few hours a week “so he is doing well there, but I’m afraid of what could happen if these services would go away.

“It would not be a good thing for anyone. I’m sure there are other places to make cuts but not to people that actually need help, “ Torgovec said.