Category Archives: feeney

Update on NY’s TBI Waiver

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The New York State Department of Health is looking for a not-for-profit entity to serve as the state’s neurobehavioral resource project. At least $400,000 in state tax dollars is available for the first year of the upcoming contract. The current neurobehavioral project has been headed for the past 15 years by Timothy J. Feeney who, as this blog as reported, who misrepresented and continues to misrepresent his credentials.

Mr. Feeney’s contract expires December 30 of this year. The concern now for survivors of brain injury like myself, along with health care providers and family members, advocates and others, is what standards will the DOH set this time and will the DOH be sure to vet those who contract with the state to provide support and services to people who live with brain injuries.

While the Feeney era may appear to be over, it ain’t over until it’s over, as the delightful Yogi Berra says.

The following is the standards the NY DOH is seeking for the director of the neurobehavioral project. While there seems to be an increase in standards, it concerns me that the qualifications being sought are absent any real clinical background in brain injury. In other words, one would have hoped a neuropsychologist or neurologist would be sought. You can review the grant funding application request in its entirety at:

http://www.health.state.ny.us/funding/rfa/0908031109/0908031109.pdf

To be qualified to be the Project Director, the individual should possess substantial clinical experience with persons with a TBI and/or a neurobehavioral disorder in community based settings. Project Director must have one of the following credentials:
(A)
A license and current registration to practice medicine in New York, and board eligibility or board certification in psychiatry with three (3) years of experience providing behavioral services; or
(B)
A license and current registration to practice psychology in New York State, and three (3) years of experience in providing behavioral services or traumatic brain injury services; or
(C)
Master of Social Work, Doctorate or Master degree in Psychology, Registered Physical Therapist (licensed by NYS Education Department pursuant to Article 136 of the NYS Education Law), Mental Health Practitioner (licensed by NYS Education Department pursuant to Article 163 of the NYS Education Law), Registered Professional Nurse (licensed by the NYS Education Department pursuant to Article 139 of the NYS Education Law), Certified Special Education Teacher (certified by the NYS

Education Department), Certified Rehabilitation Counselor (certified as a Certified Rehabilitation Counselor by the Commission on Rehabilitation Counselor Certification), Licensed Speech Language Pathologist (licensed by the NYS Education Department pursuant to Article 159 of the NYS Education Law), or Registered Occupational Therapist (licensed by the NYS Education Department pursuant to Article 156 of the NYS Education Law), and a minimum five (5) years of experience providing neurobehavioral services.

If you have suggestions or comments or concerns, please let this blog know, and don’t hesitate to contact:

Charlotte Mason

NYS Department of Health Office of Long Term Care Division of Home and Community-Based Services Bureau of Medicaid Waivers

99 Washington Avenue, Suite 826

Albany, New York 12210

Attn: Brenda Rossman
E-Mail: tbi@health.state.ny.us

A NY State Department of Health Cover-up?

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A September 16th letter from the New York State Department of Health might lead some to think the DOH has no problem awarding several million dollars to a neurobehavioral project headed by a man who continues to misrepresent his credentials to those he serves. Timothy J. Feeney continues to represent himself as  Dr. Timothy J. Feeney or Timothy J. Feeney PhD when he is no more a doctor than Felix the Cat is.

Feeney presents himself to brain injury survivors and their families as having a PhD and master’s degrees when he doesn’t. He did get bogus degrees from a diploma mill located in Hawaii and California in the 1990s before moving its operation to Norfolk Island off the coast of Australia in 1998. Greenwich University, not to be confused with the prestigious University of Greenwich in England, was a non-accredited diploma mill that graces numerous diploma mill lists on the net. It closed its doors in 2003.

Despite the fact Feeney himself says the DOH new all along about his degrees, he has, for nearly 15 years now,  headed up the Neurobehavioral Resource Project for New York State’s Traumatic Brain Injury Waiver. The NRB is arguably the most powerful influence over the TBI Waiver, a Medicaid program designed to provide services to brain injury survivors across the state.   While there is no argument that the TBI Waiver is needed because it affords many with brain injuries the chance to live in the community, there is also no argument that those who live with brain injuries, their loved ones, and the hard working companies that provide waiver services,  have a right to expect people to be who they say they are.

Letters to DOH employee Patricia Greene-Gumson along with a second letter to Deputy DOH Commissioner Mark Kissinger raising the issue of Feeney’s false claims and calling for an investigation not only into Feeney and his conduct but into who wrote the three contracts that don’t require the head of the project to have so much as a master’s degree. The two letters resulted in the September 16th one-page response from a Lydia Kosinski , Assistant Director for the Division of Home and Community Based Services. In her letter Kosinski says  the DOH was more concerned with work experience than college degrees when it chose the director of the NRP. While Feeney’s resume does not reveal much experience with brain injury in the first place, the question of his misrepresenting himself still lingers and was left untouched in the letter.

While I will try to hold to the belief that the DOH  is not the villain here, the Kosinski letter has begun to loosen my grasp.

One thing is for sure, if Feeney’s contract, which expires the 30th of this month, is renewed, there will be every reason to conclude that the DOH is more supportive of the disingenuous Feeney than it is of those us who live with brain injuries..

It is flat out tragic when you get the message that asking people to be who they say they are is asking too much.