HI All,

See attached document and email below concerning proposed DODD rules and rates for non-medical transportation. It seems there are pros and cons to these proposed rules. Please let me know your thoughts so I can respond next week.

Thanks,

Lisa

 

 

Good Morning Everyone,

 

I hope you all have had a great week and are ready for a relaxing holiday weekend. I’m writing with some updates to our work regarding transportation and to get your feedback on a NMT proposal from DODD. 

 

Unfortunately, after months of believing that DODD would be adopting our recommendation for a per-trip rate for smaller vehicles, we learned earlier this week that they would not be adopting this change at this time.  The reasons are not completely clear to me, but are related to other changes that are apparently taking place to all transportation services statewide with ODOT.

 

DODD has, however, put forth a different proposal that they believe could still address some of our concerns and help align NMT with some of our other services.  The basic jist of this recommendation would be to make the Per-Mile NMT rates mirror the way that transportation is handled under HPC. Here is the summation of these changes.

 

-Vehicle and provider requirements for the per-mile trip would be loosened and mirror HPC transportation. These changes include the removal of the requirement for controlled substance checks, the need for fire extinguishers, communication devices and yearly inspections. Those requirements would now only apply to the per-trip rate.

 

-The requirement that you could not charge for both NMT and the service being provided (ADS, VOC HAB) would be removed and only apply to the per-trip rate. 

 

-The mileage rate will be lowered to match the HPC rate as now the provider would be charging the service rate in addition to the mileage rate, same as HPC.

 

 

So while this recommendation does address some of our issues, including the increased ability to both use normal vehicles, either staff vehicles or a fleet of smaller vehicles, with less requirements around them, there are also some major things to consider.  Mainly, any NMT provider who IS NOT an ADS provider will have a significantly lowered mileage rate as they will not be able to bill the ADS in combination with this new mileage rate. DODD is currently pulling data to determine if there are indeed NMT providers who are currently billing NMT at the per-mile rate, aside from commercial providers who are billing usual and customary rate.

 

Please let me know your thoughts on this issue as we need to respond to this recommendation next week. Feel free to let me know if you have any questions. The new proposed rule language is attached below.

 

Thanks and have a great weekend,

 

Scott Marks, MSW

Community Opportunities Director

Ohio Association of County Boards

Serving People with Developmental Disabilities

73 East Wilson Bridge Road, Suite B1

Worthington, Ohio 43085

614-431-0616

Cell: 614-943-0975