ISAC Information and April Meeting Materials Now Available

The Information Sharing and Advisory (ISAC) Committee for the Office of Developmental Programs (ODP) met on Tuesday, April 23, 2024. Deputy Secretary Ahrens gave an update and reminded members that on Friday, April 19, 2024, ODP published two very important announcements:

• ODP Announcement 24-038: Open for Public Comment: Proposed Waiver Amendments and Rates for Services Funded Through the Adult Autism Waiver (AAW); and
• ODP Announcement 24-039: Open for Public Comment: Proposed Implementation of Performance-Based Contracting for Residential Services, Waiver Amendments to the Consolidated, Community Living, and Person/Family Directed Waivers, and Rates.

Public comments are due June 4, 2024, for both of these announcements.

The proposed rates will be dependent on the governor’s budget passing with the proposed increases for ODP services remaining intact. Deputy Secretary Ahrens urged all stakeholders to advocate with legislators to keep this funding in the budget. Governor Shapiro has been visiting programs and sharing publicity about the importance of these services.

The Deputy Secretary also reviewed the current plans for Performance-Based Contracting for Residential Services with ISAC members. ODP has shared provider preparedness tools with the Residential Strategic Thinking Group for their feedback before publishing the provider preparedness tools and holding provider forums to support providers as they get ready for PBC implementation.

Provider preparedness tools include a Residential Provider Performance-Based Contracting Preparedness Assessment, which comes with a template to support providers developing plans to improve performance on the standards ahead of implementation in January 2025.

Once comments are reviewed and analyzed and any revisions made, the waiver application and amendments will be submitted to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for review, and negotiations implementation target date is January 1, 2025.

RCPA is holding a meeting with our members to develop comments for submission to ODP on Thursday, May 9, 2024, from 9:30 am – 12:00 pm. We ask that you register for this meeting here in order to share your thoughts and help us as we develop our response.

For any questions, please contact Carol Ferenz.