Reinvent Illinois

DRS counselors

Posted on 23. Feb, 2010 by Nancy in Reform Ideas

Now that DRS counselors are doing all the reassesments and inital assessments for the BI waiver, they have managed to invalidate all the appeal process set up to protect the customers in the waiver.

This is happening in 2 ways. (Mind you they were put in place to avoid the conflict of interest posed by allowing case management agencies to do assessments as well as set up the services for the customer)

1. The counselor in Peoria has added hours to home service plans that were taken away by case managers even after there was an appeal process, sometimes tripling the number of hours in the service plan. The addition in hours is added without any changes in the customer’s needs and no change in the Determination of Need Score. To me this invalidates the appeal procedure and wastes money.

2. When a counselor changes the service plan, they do not send out service notice letters to customers. This is a requirment of the program. These letters allow the customer to appeal if needed. It is there right!! Also the personal assistants are not informed in a timely manner.

How is making the counselors do the assessments/ressessments not a conflict of interest.