Category Archives: fair hearing

No Brain Injury Training for NY RRDSs

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The very people hired by the New York State Department of Health to oversee the implementation of the state’s traumatic brain injury waiver receive no mandatory training in brain injury or the brain. 

Two Regional Resource Specialists from the Capitol Region, Maria Relyea and Robert Korotich, acknowledged in a meeting this week that the Department of Health requires no mandatory training in brain injury for RRDSs statewide. 

Given the fact it is the RRDSs who issue the decisions that brain injury survivors will have the services cut or denied altogether, the fact those issuing these decisions are not required to undergo any training about the brain is inexcusable. It’s tantamount to hiring a couple of folks off the street to have them oversee the care of those who’ve sustain spinal cord injuries or are dealing with Parkinson’s  when, with few exceptions, they don’t know anything about SCIs or Parkinson’s.

When you couple this with the fact the state’s Department of Health knowingly signed a contract that will funnel hundreds of thousand of dollars in the direction of Timothy J. Feeney, a PhD wannabe who continues to misrepresent his educational credentials and who has had, according to his own resume, no real training in brain injury, it is hard to reach any conclusion other than the DOH and those of Feeney’s ilk don’t give a damn about those of us who live with brain injuries.

The other conclusion that can be, I think, safely drawn, is the DOH feels it is appropriate to hire people to oversee  the TBI Waiver and directly influence the services waiver participants get or don’t get who are simply not qualified to do so. This is not only unfair, immoral and damaging to brain injury survivors, it is unfair, immoral and damaging to the many companies and individuals around the state who provide services to brain injury survivors. After all, they are expected to following the DOH/RRDS marching orders when the latter tandem knows less about brain injury than the providers do. 

The meeting this week referenced above was the conference I’d asked for that is allowed to take place before a Fair Hearing. My fair hearing is scheduled for December 1. Although I’d written to these RRDSs asking for the conference provided for before a fair hearing, both claimed they didn’t realize this weeks conference was the conference before the fair hearing, claiming that they thought I just wanted to talk about the DOH’s denial of my assistive technology requests.

And just when you thought things could get any slipperier.

Oh, almost forgot. I did inform both Ms. Relyea and Mr. Korotich that I want to have the pre-fair hearing conference with them before the fair hearing. I followed that up with and email confirming this.

A Denial & A Memo

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 The Denial

It came as no surprise today when I received a notice from the New York State TBI Waiver denying my request for white noise machines and a life alert. 

Never mind that I live with significant noise sensitivity secondary to the brain damage and never mind that I live with brain damage, a heart condition, PTSD and asthma and, by the way, live in a rural area far from a hospital. Never mind that my physician and my psychotherapist wrote letters documenting that the requested items were medical necessities.

What is clear is that the denial I just received, and similar denials being issued across the state, more often than not include every form of reasoning except the best interest of the brain injury survivor.

The denial was, I suspect, issued by some so-called medical director, who, in all likelihood, knows little about brain injury, never reviewed my records, never talked with my doctors or, perish the thought, me.

There are, as some of you may know already, a dramatic increase in fair hearing requests across the state in response to survivors of brain injury receiving notices that they are being kicked off the waiver,  or having their services reduced or  cut altogether.

Will I be asking for a fair hearing, a form of appeal provided by the law?  You bet.

More to come.

Memo to DOH

Early in  his first term President Obama said, “Sunshine is the best disinfectant.”  He meant that bringing things into the light, into the open, creating transparency, was the best way to shed light on dysfunction and wrongdoing, make it more difficult to engage in shady backroom deals. This sunshine also brings into the open the fine things that are being done, the hard working efforts that people and agencies and companies do make. Yesterday’s blog post praised Sunnyview Rehabilitation Hospital along with Natalie Marabello for ultimately handling a complaint in class way rich with integrity. Which is, more than can be said of the DOH, which is still reviewing the same complaint and has a complaint line protocol that does not require it to even respond to the complainant.

Over the years, in public and in private,  my stance has always been the same. If individuals, groups, companies or government agencies make decisions that truly protect the equal rights of people with disabilities (and all people by the way) and  assure that those who work with us are supporting our quest for independence, I will openly praise and support you.

If, on the other hand, there are individuals, groups, companies or government agencies making decisions that deny our equal rights and deny our right to achieve independence then I will, after private attempts at communication fail, expose you every single time.  That’s what advocates do!

I know some do not like it when this blog brings things into the open. But some of those who don’t like it bear some responsibility for things appearing in the blog. Consider this: when attempt after to attempt to communicate is not responded to,  what should the person with the disability do? Fall silent? If we do, then we are allowing the lack of communication to still our voices, and that is the last thing that should happen.

Silence has no place in this – sunshine does.