Late on Friday, Dec. 13, the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) released an update on the Competitive Workforce Factor (CWF) announcing it had not yet received a response from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on whether the application of the CWF had been approved. Where does that leave providers, lead agencies, advocates and individuals served as they try to complete authorizations and compute rates for services that start in 2020?
To recap, here’s what we know so far:
- The final omnibus health and human services (HHS) bill that Gov. Walz signed into law following the 2019 special legislative session included a competitive workforce factor of 4.7% that applied to direct care awake staff. It did not apply to asleep staff, supervisory hours, or RN and LPN nursing hours.
- On October 1, 2019, DHS sent a waiver amendment application to CMS that included the CWF as well as many other changes to the existing waiver amendment. CMS has 90 days to make a formal response, which means their response could come as late as December 31, 2019. In their response, they can approve or deny it wholesale, or respond with questions and/or concerns for DHS to respond to, which would start the 90-day clock all over again upon DHS’ response.
- In October 2019, DHS released the Disability Waiver Rate System (DWRS) component values for 2020. They were identical to the 2019 values with the exception of the asleep overnight wage component increasing from $9.86 to $10.00 per hour to reflect the state’s new minimum wage, effective January 1, 2020.
- In November, 2019, DHS notified lead agencies and home and community-based service waiver providers that use the Rate Management System (RMS) within the MnCHOICES Support Plan that they would update the RMS on December 13, 2019. This RMS update would include changes to some framework component values which would affect 2020 rate calculations, and would include the CWF if CMS’ approval was received by that time.
What now?...
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Remember, if your organization has questions about the impact of the Competitive Workforce Factor and the end of rate banding in 2020, ARRM has resources. Find low cost recordings of trainings and sample worksheets on our Training Archive (available free to ARRM members), and for customized support visit www.arrm.org/CWF.
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