Dear Colleagues:
I’d like to give you an update this week on some of the many initiatives now under way in our agency’s commitment to further ensure the safety and welfare of individuals with developmental disabilities.
We have created a new Incident Management Team within the Division of Quality Management (DQM). This team will provide statewide oversight and critical review of events, protections and notifications. The team will review immediate corrective actions and recommendations to determine appropriateness and address any issues or concerns. The Team will also work closely with the DQM survey and certification staff, a new Investigations unit and a reformed state employee disciplinary review process. Lastly, the Team will conduct regional and statewide data trend analysis on which to base systemic improvements in operations.
Other new actions recently put in place at OPWDD include:
· Restructuring of the agency’s investigative process to make investigations independent from operations and ensure consistency statewide. This means that the 13 existing investigation teams working for the local districts will now be overseen by the OPWDD Office of Investigations and Internal Affairs, organized under five regions statewide. In addition, all current and new investigative staff will have to undergo training and be required to become certified. The training and certification will be completed by early fall and will be conducted by national experts. In addition, OPWDD is in the process of engaging national experts to review and evaluate current agency policies and procedures for recommended reform. Recommendations are expected to be provided to OPWDD within approximately 90 days of the commencement of the review.
OPWDD has restructured the agency’s disciplinary review process, creating a Statewide Disciplinary Panel, consisting of the Director of Employees Relations, the appropriate District Director and the Director of Internal Affairs and Investigations, to ensure consistent application of disciplinary actions across the system which reflect the quality of care values held by OPWDD. This means that disciplinary cases which meet a certain threshold will result in immediate suspension of the employee without pay; termination of employees will be pursued when appropriate; and no settlements will be accepted in abuse cases, unless the settlement includes resignation of the employee.
· The Commissioner has reconstructed the agency’s current “Early Alert Committee” which oversees voluntary providers to better prevent serious and/or systemic problems from occurring, as well as to take more timely and definitive action when agencies are unable to demonstrate that they can sustain quality services. This committee will be chaired by the Deputy Commissioner of Quality Management and include Associate Commissioners of all divisions as well as other members of upper level management.
Beginning next week, I will be requiring that state employees certify that during their work hours they have reported any incidents of abuse or neglect of any individual as required by OPWDD regulations. Furthermore they will be required to acknowledge that any misrepresentation may be punishable by disciplinary and/or criminal action.
In addition to these most recent items, we continue to proceed with the announcements I made several weeks ago, which included tightening our standards for hiring of all direct-care applicants; requiring training for all OPWDD staff to support the professional ethics of our system, as well as methods of preventing and reporting abuse and neglect; providing resources to voluntary providers so that same training could be accomplished with voluntary staff; and visits by agency leadership to all 1,051-state operated homes to examine the quality of care and meet with staff and individuals.
I am pleased to report that members of our management team each week are making visits to all state-operated homes. In addition to ensuring safety and care standards, these visits have yielded great benefits to our programs, the agency and most importantly – the individuals we serve with developmental disabilities.
I will continue to keep you informed on progress. I welcome your comments and suggestions at people.first@opwdd.ny.gov and I deeply value the partnership of our employees, stakeholders, provider agencies and their staff and individuals with developmental disabilities and their families as we work to bring about the changes that will promote the high-quality standards for service.
Sincerely,
Courtney Burke
Commissioner