New Mexico Legislative Health Committee Wants Answers to HCA Failure to Seek Rate Increase for Developmentally Disability Workers Pay Raises
Refusal of Agency to Apply to CMS for Budget Approved Rate Increase to Assist in Pay Increases for Direct Caregivers, Riles Legislators.
Last week at their organizational meeting, members of the Interim Legislative Health and Human Services Committee voted to send a letter to Health Care Authority Secretary Kari Armijo, Medicaid Director Dana Flannery, and Developmental Disabilities Supports Division Director Jennifer Rodriguez, expressing the lawmakers’ dismay and confusion with the “the idea that the authority would not even try to receive matching federal funds to support the critical need of increasing compensation for the people who are serving this state’s most vulnerable populations.”
On behalf of the committee, Chairwoman and Representative Liz Thomson and Vice Chair and Senator Linda Lopez, wrote, “We, the members of the Legislative Health and Human Services Committee, write to express our serious concern for how appropriations intended to provide raises to direct support professionals are being used.”
The Committee requested that the three administrators attend the next LHHS meeting session which is set for June 25-27, 2025.
During the legislative session this past March, lawmakers voted an appropriation for, “the developmental disabilities support program of the health care authority in the other financing uses category …” that included “… twenty-six million one hundred ninety-five thousand dollars ($26,195,000) to raise rates for developmental disability providers.”
The letter to Secretary Armijo, and Directors Flannery and Rodriguez, also stated, “The Legislative Health and Human Services Committee has continuously prioritized supporting New Mexico’s health care workforce and urges the Health Care Authority to make every effort to secure the maximum amount of funding to provide compensation to the state’s direct support professionals.”
Those developmental disability providers are the non-profit entities and companies that hire direct care providers also known as direct support professionals.
As The Candle reported in early May:
If you Google a definition of direct care providers/professionals, you will likely get something like this for a response:
“Direct Support Professional. They are healthcare workers who provide direct support to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) in their daily lives, helping them with various tasks and activities. DSPs play a crucial role in ensuring these individuals receive the necessary assistance to live independently and participate in their communities …”
The way it is supposed to work is, once the legislators and governor have passed and signed the budget bill, the Health Care Authority leaders are supposed to put together the paperwork to submit to the federal government – the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) – seeking a match of federal funds to the state appropriation.
That match is significant – it brings about three times what the state funds – which is critically important to the people who care for the individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities in their daily lives because it makes sure that workers can be paid enough to be there to care for them.
For the past two years, the New Mexico Health Care Authority under the current administration has been needlessly late in getting this paperwork done when the legislature has appropriated funds for these direct care workers.
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