COFAR blog

Questions linger over a change in the way COVID-19 testing is being done in the Department of Developmental Services (DDS) system, including whether the change contains a loophole for staff testing and whether it could mean less publicly reported data.

The change in testing policy was instituted last month by the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS), which has taken charge of the testing program. It appears DDS and possibly other agencies under the EOHHS umbrella will have little or no involvement in managing the testing.

Baker administration officials are not answering many of our questions about the new testing policy, which is outlined in an EOHHS directive last month to all residential DDS providers. The directive requires the providers both to undertake their own COVID testing for the first time and to include all residential program staff in that testing requirement.

Under the EOHHS directive, residential providers must now engage their own testing providers and labs, and will be reimbursed by the state for the costs. The directive changes a policy in the DDS system under which a single company, Fallon Ambulance Service, has been providing mobile testing to group homes around the state.

While we support a portion of the new policy requiring that residential staff undergo “baseline testing,” a number of questions have not been answered:

1. Will residents and staff actually undergo follow-up biweekly “surveillance” testing, or will an apparent loophole in the EOHHS policy prevent surveillance testing in many regions of the state?
2. Will day program staff avoid a testing requirement altogether, under the EOHHS policy?
3. Will the results of the staff testing be made public, and who will report those results?

The apparent testing loophole

While the EOHHS directive specifies that baseline testing for staff and residents in all DDS group homes and developmental centers be done by September 30, it is not clear whether biweekly retesting, or “surveillance testing,” will actually go into effect in all regions of the state.

The EOHHS directive establishes a “regional transmission threshold” in order to determine the need for surveillance testing. Each of five regions of the state is identified as either a “high transmission” or “low transmission” region for COVID-19.

High-transmission regions are those that have a weekly average transmission rate equal to or greater than 40 cases per 100,000 residents. Low-transmission regions are those that have a transmission rate less than 40 cases.

According to the directive, providers located in high-transmission regions must undertake the surveillance testing. However, providers in low-transmission regions are required only to do surveillance testing when there are individuals in their facilities who show symptoms of the virus.

The transmission rates in each region are published weekly by EOHHS. As of the most recent weekly report, dated September 16, only one of the state’s five regions met that 40-cases threshold. That was the northeast region, which had 41 new cases. The western region had a low of 15 cases, followed by the central region with 21 cases, the southeastern region with 23 cases, and the Boston region with 31 cases.

Thus, as of this month, only the northeast region currently meets the threshold of positive cases among residents that would apparently trigger the ongoing surveillance testing requirement.

This threshold requirement sounds to us like a loophole that at least currently avoids surveillance testing in most of the DDS system. DDS staff, in particular, will only need to be tested once in most regions of the state, and will not have to be retested unless the rate of infection rises significantly among the general population in the region.

It is not clear, however, that the rate of COVID infection in group homes and other DDS facilities is directly related to the rate of infection in the general population. Without regular retesting of staff, in particular, it will be difficult to identify possibly rising infection rates in the DDS system.

Day program staff left out of testing requirement

DDS staff are also left out of the new EOHHS testing policy in another respect. As we have reported, the EOHHS directive did not include staff working in day programs. It is unclear what the reason is for that omission or whether extending the directive to day programs is under consideration.

We expressed concern to DDS Commissioner Jane Ryder in an email on August 28 that a failure to include day program staff in the directive appears to leave a major hole in the testing program in the DDS system. Ryder has not responded to our message.

Community-based and other types of provider-run day programs were reopened in early August as data began to indicate declining rates of the viral infection in the state. But the administration acknowledges that a risk of infection remains in the day programs.

Although day programs have been reopened, some residential providers are not sending residents to them because of the COVID infection risk. At this time, we don’t actually know how many day programs are operating or how many people are attending them. But whatever that number is, there is apparently no requirement that staff in those programs be tested.

Public reporting requirements may be reduced

As noted, in requiring that DDS residential providers arrange on their own for COVID testing of residents and staff, EOHHS is ending the Fallon Ambulance Service mobile testing program.

While that mobile testing program has been ongoing, DDS has provided us, upon written request, with cumulative testing data for clients and staff. That data has also shown the rate of testing being done by Fallon. It is not clear that that same level of data will continue to be reported after September 30, in part, because it does not appear that DDS will have testing data after that date to report.

On September 16, DDS ombudsman Christopher Klaskin told us that from September 30 on, “providers are required to report progress directly to (EOHHS) for completion of baseline staff testing – so they (EOHHS) are collecting that data point moving forward.”

Klaskin also said that “updated numbers moving forward are only reflective of that data point and will not include surveillance testing.” He did not respond to my query as to whether this means that results of surveillance testing will not be reported publicly by EOHHS.

EOHHS weekly online testing data do not show results for provider staff 

Adding to our concern about the potential for reduced reporting of COVID test results is EOHHS’s ongoing policy of not publicly reporting the results of COVID tests done on provider staff.

While online EOHHS Weekly Facility Reports show the number of clients in DDS-funded group homes and developmental centers who are currently positive for the virus, the reports do not include the testing results of staff of group homes run by DDS corporate providers. For reasons that have never been explained to us, the EOHHS reports only provide results for testing of staff in the DDS’s much smaller network of state-run group homes.

As noted, DDS has provided us up to now with the results of provider staff tests.

As we have reported, top EOHHS administrators discussed proposals in June for reducing public reporting of COVID testing results in DDS and other congregate care facilities, including the reporting of staff testing results.

Agencies not complying with Public Records Law on mandatory staff testing records

In general, as we have reported, information about COVID testing in the DDS system has been difficult to get from the administration. We have been asking since May for internal emails and other records from EOHHS, DDS, and the Department of Public Health (DPH) on mandatory staff testing.

To date, we have received zero records from those agencies in response to our request.

On July 24, the state’s public records supervisor ordered EOHHS to clarify whether they possessed any records responsive to our request, and to respond to our request “as soon as practicable.” To date, we have received no communication from EOHHS.

In sum, the jury is still out, in our opinion, as to whether EOHHS has adopted a serious and effective COVID testing policy for the DDS system. As of now, we have substantial doubts that it has done so.