DHHS-OADS: Home & Community-Based Services Quality Assurance Project Town Hall

Home and Community-Based Services Quality Assurance Project Town Hall Announcement
 
In December 2024, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) started a project to improve quality of home and community-based services (HCBS). DHHS is working with a group called Alvarez and Marsal (A&M). This project is for people who have an intellectual disability, an autism spectrum disorder, or an acquired brain injury and receive personal care, homemaker, home health services, or habilitation services such as home and community support.

Some key terms you might hear during this project are:

• Reportable Event: When something harmful happens, like an injury or a mistake with medicine.
• Incident Management: How DHHS tracks and fixes these kinds of problems.

The project will examine how DHHS handles problems to improve services and make them safer and better. The goal is to improve how DHHS manages these events, so that everyone gets the highest quality support.  This is part of a larger effort to meet new Medicaid rules from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

We Want to Hear from You!
DHHS is hosting a town hall meeting to share information and listen to your ideas. A&M will explain the project and ask for your feedback. Your input will help DHHS understand what’s working and what needs improvement. This is your chance to make a difference in how problems like injuries or medication mistakes are handled.

Important Details:

• When: Tuesday, January 21, 2025
• Time: 3:00pm- 4:00pm
• Who:  Individuals and families using services, advocates, and support groups
• Where:  Online (you'll need to register using the link below)

If you can’t join the live session, recordings will be available on the DHHS website. You can also send your feedback by email.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

We hope you’ll join us! Together, we can make home and community services better for everyone.
Please note there are other ongoing town halls related to the Access Rule that may touch on incident management topics. This session will focus on how OADS manages reportable events in certain waiver programs, specifically:

• Section 21 (Home and Community Benefits for Members with Intellectual Disabilities or Autism Spectrum Disorder) and
• Section 29 (Support Services for Adults with Intellectual Disabilities or Autism Spectrum Disorder).

​If you require accommodation, such as real-time transcription and captioning (CART), American Sign Language (ASL), or other language interpretation, please contact April Keyes at [email protected]