COFAR blog

We’ve raised a number of questions over the past year about the thoroughness and effectiveness of the state’s policies and procedures for inspecting and licensing group homes for people with intellectual disabilities. (See here and here.)

Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful in persuading the Legislature’s Children, Families, and Persons with Disabilities Committee to hold a hearing on the issues we raised. 

But in response to our concerns, the Department of Developmental Services did indicate it was making efforts to update group home licensure reports on its website that we found were sometimes years out of date. 

These licensure reports provide both information about the results of inspections of the vendors’ group homes and the type and duration of the license or licenses each vendor has been granted.  The licenses are normally granted for two-year periods, so any such licensure reports that are more than two years old are, by definition, out of date.

In May of this year, DDS Commissioner Elin Howe stated in a letter to Representative Kay Khan, co-chair of the Children and Families Committee, that in addition to updating the licensure reports on the DDS website, licensure follow-up reports were being posted as of that time showing the outcomes of deficiency findings in the original reports.

As a result of these assurances from DDS, we went back and took another look this week at the online DDS licensure data for the same sample of 30 group home vendors that we first examined more than a year ago. 

Based on the follow-up we’ve just done, it appears that DDS has taken some steps to update the licensure information on its website; however, much of the information still appears to remain out of date.   Of the same 30 providers, licensure reports for 11 were still out of date as of this week, and one report (for the Merrimack Education Center) was no longer posted.  That’s now 40 percent of the sample with out of date or missing reports. 

Also, the promised follow-up licensure reports or updates were posted for only eight of the 30 vendors in the sample.  (See table below with the latest results of our review of the DDS online licensure reports for our vendor sample.)  No follow-up reports were posted for any of the 44 vendors listed on the website in the Metro Boston area.

In addition,  the licensure reports posted on the DDS website for Behavioral Associates of Massachusetts (BAM) and the Center for Human Development (CHD) —  two vendors that we selected for review — remained out of date this week, and no follow-up reports or updates were posted for either vendor.  The BAM licensure report was dated April 2009 and the CHD report was dated November 2010.

We had reported in our April 2012 newsletter that DDS didn’t appear to have followed up on numerous deficiencies noted in the BAM and CHD licensure reports.    As we noted in the newsletter article, a subsequent licensure report for BAM, dated May 2010, addressed some, but not all, of the licensing deficiencies identified in the previous April 2009 report.

Yet, that same April 2009 document was still the only licensure report for BAM that was posted on the DDS site as of this week.  We had received the subsequent May 2010 licensure report from DDS in February of this year in response to a Public Records request.  By the way, even that May 2010 report would have been out of date by now had it been posted on the DDS site.

Similarly, the November 2010 licensure report for CHD is now out of date because the two-year license for the vendor was listed in that report as valid through October 2012.

As we reported in the same April 2012 newsletter article, the November 2010 CHD report had cited the vendor for failing to report three incidents of abuse or neglect to the state Disabled Persons Protection Commission.  In response to our same Public Records request, we received a follow-up report on CHD, dated December 2010, in February.  Yet, as of this week, that December 2010 follow-up report had not been posted on the DDS site.

We sent an email message to DDS Commissioner Howe asking why it is taking so long to replace out-of-date licensure reports on the DDS website and why so few follow-up reports appear to have been posted.  We cc’d Rep. Khan’s general counsel on the message.  So far, we haven’t heard back from either Howe’s or Khan’s offices.

Results of COFAR review of DDS online group home licensure reports as of the week of November 5, 2012