In accordance with the directive in the Governor’s Executive Directive 1 to remove “regulations not mandated by federal or state statute, in consultation with the Office of the Attorney General, and in a manner consistent with the laws of the Commonwealth,” the DBHDS Office of Human Rights reviewed the human rights regulations to identify noncontroversial amendments and developed a draft for consideration as fast track actions. There is a public comment forum for 30 days on this draft:

DRAFT Noncontroversial Regulatory Reductions to Chapter 115 

Purpose: The purpose of the draft revisions of the Human Rights Regulations is to improve the ability of the Office Human Rights to perform its mandated responsibilities in a manner that promotes understanding of assured rights and access to rights protection and due process for all individuals receiving services.

Goals:

• Make the regulations easier to understand.
• Increase individuals’ access to due process and rights protection.
• Improve administrative and program efficiencies to facilitate both provider compliance and increased availability of advocates for direct involvement with individuals receiving services. 

High-Level Revisions:

Enhance user friendliness of the regulations and make them easier to understand.

• Expands definitions (coercion, investigation).
• Simplifies language (removed references to "allegation" and referred to everything as a complaint, added call-out of exploitation where there is mention of abuse and neglect, purposefully added "human rights" to advocate references to help individuals differentiate from provider and other protective agency advocate staff).
• Consistently labeled timeframes (working days = business days, clarified calendar days).
• Eliminates redundant references (-105 removed call-out of restraint and time-out as restrictions; -50, -175, and -230 reference each other by citation only).

Streamline administrative processes.

• Clarifies the relationship between the Office of Human Rights and human rights committees (-180, -200, -210 communication to LHRC is through OHR).
• Complaint investigation and resolution (timeframe for individual to file a complaint is within one year of receipt of services, clarifies complaints after discharge are allowable, clarifies provider has 10 business days to investigate and decide vs. 20 business days).
• Determination of capacity (-145 clarified person supervised by licensed professional can conduct capacity evaluation; added).
• Develops timeframes where there were none (-90 provides 10 calendar days to decide to deny records, - 145 provides 10 business days to refer review of independent capacity evaluation to the LHRC).

Emphasis on Individual\\'s rights and expansion of access to due process. 

• Reorganizes subsections to emphasize individual rights and provider duties (-90, -145: individuals presumed to have capacity, capacity evaluations are not competency determinations, evaluations must be specific about the type(s) of decision requiring a decision-maker -146 provider shall consider individuals preferences for decisions that do not require consent even if there is an AR),
• Eliminates legal terminology related to administrative review processes (hearing = fact-finding review, petition = statement of disagreement),
• Institutes advocate review of objections regarding AR appointment (this used to be delayed waiting for LHRCs to meet and simply required record review).
• Reinstitutes advocate ability to grant extensions to allow more time for a thorough investigation (accidentally removed in 2017 revision of the regulations).
• Emphasizes changes to previously approved provider policies must be submitted to the OHR for review (-100 program rules, -260).

Reduction in ambiguity related to provider compliance.

• Clarifies particular regulations and processes that apply to special populations (-100 acknowledges privileging process for individuals with a forensic status, -50 removed call-out process for SUD providers to use program rules).
• Refines expectations for complaint investigation (-30 defined investigation, -175 adds expectation for provider to identify a person to oversee investigation and make decisions when the accused is the director, -260 require competency training for provider investigators annually).
• Specifies expectations for mitigating human rights violations (-230 expands requirement to enter information about corrective actions taken in reports to OHR, -260 inform individuals and ARs of any actions taken to correct or remediate the abuse even if identified by OHR).