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DD board cuts busing
AUSTINTOWN
Beginning May 2, the Mahoning County Board of Developmental Disabilities will reduce the transportation it provides to its adult workshop clients and shift some of that transportation to other service providers.
“My hope is that there is no change in the transportation service. It’s just a different name on the side of the vehicle,” said Bill Whitacre, MCBDD superintendent.
The DD board operates three adult workshops: Meshel MASCO and Bev Road MASCO, both in Boardman, and the Center at Javit Court in Austintown.
For the 20 adults affected by elimination of two local DD board bus routes over the next two months, transportation will be provided by other entities such as Purple Cat, Carousel, Turning Point or Siffrin, he said.
The DD board will pay 40 percent and the federal government 60 percent of the cost of transportation by a new provider.
Whitacre said he knows of no shortage of availability of transportation from these alternative providers, but he said the DD board could remain the transporter in cases where there’s no available alternative.
Students at the DD board’s Leonard Kirtz School will not be affected by the transportation changes.
Under a state mandate to reduce board-provided services to adults under the Medicaid waiver program, the DD board has said it will reduce the busing it provides to adults by not replacing drivers who resign or retire.
The forthcoming changes are occurring because of the resignations of two of the DD board’s drivers, Whitacre said.
The transportation change is occurring in the context of a federal requirement that the DD board reduce the number of adults it serves under Medicaid waivers from 270 today to zero by 2024.
The Medicaid waiver is a waiver of the usual Medicaid-income eligibility limits to enable the DD board to serve clients whose families wouldn’t otherwise be income-eligible for Medicaid.
Nonmedical busing to and from workshops or private employers is billed to Medicaid under the waiver program.
By 2024, the DD board no longer will be allowed to provide workshop services under Medicaid waivers, so it will be faced with closing or privatizing its workshops, Whitacre said.
The principle driving the Medicaid rule changes is that it’s a potential conflict of interest for a DD board to be the funder, case manager and service provider, he explained.
After 2024, the DD board still will be the funder and case manager, but it won’t provide services for adults.
Under federal and state rules, the DD board is accepting no new enrollees into its adult workshops under the Medicaid waiver program.
“It really upsets me that the people that make these decisions – it could be the governor or his staff – that they’re really not there,” at the workshops, said Mahoning County Commissioner Carol Rimedio-Righetti.
“Those [workshop] clients are actually doing jobs for companies, so it’s not like we just pick them up, bring them there, and they color,” she added.