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Day Habilitation services
Day Hab Rates 
Stuck in  State Bureaucracy

What is Day Hab?

 

As the only community-based therapeutic daytime service in Massachusetts designed for adults with developmental disabilities, it provides a combination of clinical services, medical oversight, and life skills/adult daily living training. Services are offered six hours/day, five days/week, 52 weeks/year. There are 143 sites throughout the Commonwealth. Over 7,300 adults with various abilities are served, and the majority of recipients have intellectual disabilities.

 

Some of the individuals require complex clinical and medical supports to sustain their life's functions while others live and work in the community with partial assistance.  

Why are Current Rates Urgent for Day Hab Programs?  

 

Day Hab programs are not covered by Chapter 257 rate reform.

 

Day Hab program staff are excluded from Salary Reserve funds.

 

Day Hab workers are the most underpaid staff working with people with challenging health and behavioral needs. 

 
State Years Late on Review, Public Hearing, and Rate Release
 
After years of delay and missed deadlines for the Day Habilitation rate review and public hearing, members of the disability community who provide service to the most fragile members of the Commonwealth are
appealing directly to Governor Deval Patrick to direct his Secretaries of Health and Human Services (EOHHS) and Administration and Finance (A & F) to release the completed and overdue rate increase.

For nearly two years, providers have been promised a rate review by MassHealth and Center for Health Information and Analysis (CHIA) administrators, who are
required by federal regulations to review the cost of providing service every two years.  The last public hearing and rate adjustment for Day Hab. programs was in 2008, over 5 years ago.

Providers have worked closely with MassHealth and CHIA to review rates. ADDP members have provided hundreds of hours of input and attended numerous meetings to review the progress of rate considerations. The review by CHIA has been complete for weeks, perhaps even months.

The recommended rate adjustment has been sitting in the inboxes of EOHHS personnel awaiting the signatures of Secretaries of EOHHS and A & F. It appears - to some providers - that the Secretaries are delaying the process to keep expenditures down, despite the fact that the proposed increase was
factored into last year's FY'14 budget.

Providers note that since February 2002, the cumulative Day Hab. rate has been adjusted only 20 cents per unit over more than a ten year period.

ADDP CEO Gary Blumenthal has indicated that ADDP members will soon begin an increased public campaign to urge the Governor and the EOHHS and A & F Secretaries to take immediate action.

Both Blumenthal and The Arc Executive Director, Leo Sarkissian, have written to Governor Deval Patrick requesting a meeting to discuss both Day Hab. rates and the upcoming fiscal year 2015 budget.