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Independent Living News & Policy from the National Council on Independent Living

NCIL Survey to Document the Impact of Electronic Visit Verification in the United States

The 21st Century Cures Act, passed into law December 2016, includes a provision requiring all states to implement Electronic Visit Verification (EVV) systems for home health care services and personal care services paid by Medicaid. Each state must have some form of EVV in use by January 1, 2020.

States are required to: ensure a robust stakeholder engagement process with consumers and independent providers of home care services; follow best practice guidelines; and ensure training is provided on use of EVV systems.

NCIL is conducting a survey on the impact of EVV in the United States. The intent and purpose of this survey is to collect information from end users of EVV systems (consumers and their home care providers) regarding their experience participating in their state’s EVV selection process and use of EVV on a regular basis. Please include as much information as you are willing to provide.

The survey is also available in Word and plain text.

The information you provide will remain confidential and only used as aggregate data. In instances where individual stories are used as examples, all identifying information shall remain anonymous. Your information will never be sold to another party.

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Comments

  1. EDITORIAL ON IHSS:

    CONFUSING GOBBLEDYGOOK–CMS ON EVV:

    To respond to all these complications brought about by the EVV and further, by the latest CMS EVV guideline, I have a few questions, please: Is IHSS AN ENTITLEMENT given to people with disabilities requiring personal assistance? If it is, why is its accounting micromanaged and seemingly weaponized to the nth level rendering it tremendously and intentionally burdensome to its recipients and providers?

    Consider this: Non-Disabled CEOs and politicians employ a lot of personal assistants to get anything done at home and at the office. Each of these operatives are paid without burdening their executive and political recipients with the mechanics, the technology and operational headaches of every pay period. They have Labor law experts, accountants, HR experts, IT specialists at their fingertips to get through the gobbledygook.

    In comparison, people with disabilities in need of personal services to survive, have none of those professionals nor do they have the tools that can match the micromanagement to the max of the IHSS in the bi-weekly processing of the payroll. The recipients are mostly disabled with physical, intellectual or mental disabilities. A majority are seniors with waning capabilities, mostly without the once robust and extended American family. It may sound ludicrous to compare the able CEOs needing assistants with the disabled needing assistants but is that more ludicrous than applying the same complicated payroll process to the once-simple and stress-free IHSS timesheet? We are talking of people with disabilities, hyper-segmented by the system based solely on disability and every consequence of it influenced by socio-economic and family factors! It is obviously intentional and sinister when programmatic obstacles like EVV thrown in as mandatory mandates are thrown in as wink-wink enhancements favoring the corporate IT industry! What happened to “if it ain’t broken don’t fix it?”

    Whose idea was EVV? Did we in the disability community clamor for even just a shadow of its invention? Why should or would we clamor for our demise? Why is the freedom and autonomy we used to enjoy at home as different from life in the nursing home being threatened now by EVV? When so-called programmatic enhancements result in actual obstacles to access to the program, it possibly becomes a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Title II. Of course the experts are yet to weigh in. But these ADA violations can produce more devastating, even fatal repercussions as they can leave severely disabled persons unattended to for days, unfed, lying in their own feces and gasping for air!

    When one already qualifies for IHSS and a set number of hours are already awarded, what use is it to anyone, bureaucrats included, how these hours are spent over the week and month? For most of the same people who are on other entitlements, aren’t the programs simply given as a monthly stipend, like SSI for example? We do not have to sit in a futile exercise trying decipher how much was spent on what. It would be a silly exercise! Why do it then for IHSS? Why not just leave the consumer and his or her worker to work out the details of the set IHSS stipend? It would save millions of dollars! Disabilities don’t change very much and mostly people’s health get worse. As they do, it does not make sense for the government to complicate the program more unless the real agenda is to cut thousands of recipients and to restrict it to the fittest.

    Written by:
    —Lillibeth Navarro
    August 11, 2019
    Lillibeth Navarro
    Communities Actively Living Independent & Free (CALIF)
    Founder & Executive Director
    634 S. Spring Street, Second Floor
    Los Angeles, CA. 90014
    http://www.calif-ilc.org
    (213) 627-0477, Voice
    (213) 627-0535, Fax
    (213) 840-4199, cell
    Email: [email protected]
    Alternative email: [email protected]

  2. John M. Cencora says

    This system is poorly designed and creates anxiety issues along with a ‘smart phone’ which I do not want, cannot afford or even need. I cannot leave my home. If my caregiver wants to take me someplace, the anxiety of checking in and checking out interferes with my quality of life. This system needs to STOP!

  3. William Payne says

    All of the fun or any hopes and dreams in life for disabled people is being taken out, shattered due to this new government tracking system and I do not want to be in a nursing home that has me worried but if anyone can change and turn this sinking ship around that would be great. It’s insane.

  4. Catherine Greenwalt says

    The evv started here in Virginia on 9/26 and it is a total disaster. It has created so many more problems . As if the problems aren’t hard and painful enough. This is nothing more than adding insult to injury. I have 3 adults I care for and live with . Agencies practically live at my house now. This has been going on for years and steadily increasing. Now this. What’s next attendants for attendants. I fear many individuals perhaps thousands will be headed for institutions. Sadly family’s will be separated and many will die due to the THOUGHTLESS DEMANDS of the system. Spying and tracking people what are we on house arrest . Evv actually interferes with job performance. It’s awful just terrible invasive insane.

  5. This clock in clock out what is this a office this is not helping people or people with Disabilities at all. I mean you can’t even wake up and even enjoy your morning and a cup of coffee unless you got to keep your eye on the time to clock in. The same as going out late to have fun you still have to keep your eye on the time you got to rush home that’s what you got to do if you do not have a smart and them Dumb A** Apps they can go to Hell my Mother is a Care Giver with 3 adult children that are disabled and going back and forth to the doctors almost everyday that’s a lot on her being single parent is not fun job. I imagine there’s a lot of parents who have disabled children single or not this has to Stop. What’s next The Men in Black while your at it send some Drones out as well put a leach with a Electronic Tazer. You already have camera’s spying on us why not put them in the bathrooms ? I thank the disabled people are nothing but trash and you don’t give a F**k them it makes me sick how a lot of people treats the disabled like trash and it’s wrong. This company is bull sh**.
    Where not Guinea Pigs this is turning into a one government and that’s they want it but this has to Stop this can’t go on . A lot of people are getting confused and a lot of them are this is not a life this isn’t normal it’s like where stuck in a cage and can’t get out. The disabled need attendance and there not going to take this bull Sh** and I do not blame them. A lot of people are probably wondering if there to lose there jobs or am I going to get payed we have speak up and shut this down or Wright Trump about this I do know I’m putting forth of an effort this is like prison the hell with that my little Brother is in a wheelchair and his attendant is not happy about it and where not either we got to Stop this