ServiceSource Comments on Chapter 105 Licensure Regulations

While ServiceSource does not propose any specific edits to the language of these regulations, we do propose a significant recommendation (that we have previously offered) to improve consistency and clarity among all relevant regulatory language.

We support an alignment of various regulatory documents to ensure efficiency and effectiveness for service delivery and to focus on health, safety and person centeredness.

Since various current regulations have unique cycles for review and revision, often one set of regulations is updated with language that does not align with other existing regulations.  This inconsistency is not necessarily a conflict, but even minor inconsistencies in language create significant barriers for compliance in staff training and service delivery.

As an example, in these Chapter 105 Licensure regulations, there is an emphasis on serious incident reporting, and we have noted that the requirements for compliance are not aligned with requirements published in the Human Rights (Chapter 115) Regulations from a few years ago, in terms of reporting abuse, neglect and exploitation.

As an overall recommendation, (which we supported as a member of the Providers Issue Resolution Workgroup--PIRW) we strongly recommend the development of a crosswalk among Licensure, Human Rights, Medicaid Waiver and the HCBS Virginia Transition Plan. 

To support providers who elect for CARF accreditation, we also propose that DBHDS accept CARF accreditation in lieu of Virginia regulations already included in CARF standards. 

We further propose that providers who receive the full 3-year CARF accreditation be awarded “Deemed Status” by DBHDS which would exempt these providers from DBHDS regulatory requirements.  This would enable DBHDS to focus its limited compliance resources on smaller and newer providers which have not completed a full external independent accreditation by CARF.

These improvements would provide a significant benefit for providers in terms of reducing redundant procedure development and implementation as well as staff training and development, not to mention the personnel resources expended by providers for numerous redundant regulatory reviews.