BILL ANALYSIS
SENATE HUMAN
SERVICES COMMITTEE
Senator Carol Liu, Chair
BILL NO: SB 886
S
AUTHOR: Florez
B
VERSION: March 16, 2010
HEARING DATE: March 23, 2010
8
FISCAL: Appropriations
8
6
CONSULTANT:
Hailey
SUBJECT
In-home supportive services providers: electronic
timekeeping
SUMMARY
Authorizes counties to use electronic timekeeping in record
keeping to verify tasks and hours completed by persons
providing in-home supportive services (IHSS).
ABSTRACT
Current law :
1. Establishes the IHSS program to provide domestic
services to persons of low income, who are aged or who have
a disability, to enable them to live safely in their homes.
2. Directs the State Department of Social Services (DSS)
to establish and implement hourly task guidelines as well
as a standard tool for consistently and accurately
assessing service needs and authorizing service hours to
meet those needs.
Continued---
STAFF ANALYSIS OF SENATE BILL 886 (Florez) Page
2
3. Provides for ensuring the quality and integrity of the
IHSS program through requirements for signed timesheets,
verification of receipt of supportive services, a criminal
records clearance for providers of services, a standardized
curriculum for county social workers in order to prevent
fraud, home visits by county social workers, a provider
enrollment form signed under penalty of perjury, and data
sharing between counties and the state to prevent fraud.
4. Allows eligible persons to receive home medical care
services or other home- and community based Medi-Cal
program services.
This bill :
1. Allows counties to use electronic timekeeping, as
defined, for providers of IHSS services to report their
payroll timesheets.
2. Requires that this electronic timekeeping includes
telephone-based interactive voice response or Web-based
technology that both identifies a provider and accurately
records the time of the provider's visit to the recipient
of services.
3. Defines "recipient" as the recipient of IHSS services,
of home medical care services, or of other home- and
community-based Medi-Cal program services.
4. Allows a person who provides services to a recipient,
as defined, to use electronic timekeeping to verify hours
of work completed.
FISCAL IMPACT
Unknown.
BACKGROUND AND DISCUSSION
Twice each month under current law and practice, more than
400,000 paper time cards from IHSS providers are submitted
and manually entered by county workers across California.
The cards require the signature of both IHSS recipient and
provider, and they reflect the hours worked in a two-week
STAFF ANALYSIS OF SENATE BILL 886 (Florez) Page
3
period. According to testimony provided to the Human
Services Committee in 2009 by representatives of DSS and of
county welfare departments, time cards are sometimes
illegible or inaccurate, are returned to the IHSS provider
and recipient, and are redone.
The Alameda County Social Services Agency testified to the
committee last year that it would like to test electronic
timekeeping in the IHSS program; the Agency testified that
it uses electronic timekeeping for other social services
programs and finds the process to be more accurate, more
efficient, and less costly than paper timesheets.
This bill would allow counties to use electronic timesheets
in the IHSS program.
Alameda County's Experience
Alameda County reports that it uses electronic reporting
and timekeeping in its foster care tracking system, its
customer automated response system, its adult and aging
automated response system. The county reports a reduction
in incorrect payments in foster care, since adopting the
electronic system, and virtually 100 percent on-time
processing. It also reports lower costs for reducing the
amount of paperwork required of county workers, freeing
them to provide professional services to foster families
and to CalWORKs recipients.
Alameda County believes that if it were allowed to use
electronic timekeeping for the IHSS program, it would
eliminate many problems stemming from timesheets arriving
unsigned, being filled out incorrectly, or not adding up
correctly. These problems take staff time to correct and
can result in delayed payment of providers.
The county has several program-integrity assurances in its
proposal:
Each provider has a unique pin number mailed to him
or her each pay period.
Clients call in when the services begin and call in
when the services are completed.
Voice prompts require that the timesheet be signed
before entering service-hour information.
Signed timesheets could be required to be mailed
into the county for reference if any problem develops.
STAFF ANALYSIS OF SENATE BILL 886 (Florez) Page
4
In July, 2011, the timesheet could also have a
fingerprint of client and caregiver.
Providers and clients would be able to update or
correct the amount of time worked up to the closing of
the pay period if someone has forgotten to call in at
the appropriate times.
Audits would be an integral feature of the process.
CMIPS II
The current paper timesheet and in-county processing goes
by the name of the Case Management, Information and
Payrolling System, or CMIPS (pronounced "SEE-mips"). For
several years, DSS has had a contract with a vendor to
develop a statewide centralized paper-processing system,
referred to as CMIPS II (pronounced "SEE-mips TWO"). Once
it is operational, the timesheets will be scanned and sent
from throughout the state to a central location for
processing. DSS is scheduled to test CMIPS II beginning in
September of this year, have five counties begin a pilot in
January of 2011, and operate the program statewide by
December of 2011.
The author may want to consider amending the bill to allow
counties that adopt electronic timekeeping to opt out of
CMIPS II.
Arguments in support
The Alameda County Board of Supervisors believes that this
bill will allow the use of technology that will improve
accuracy, lower costs, and reduce the number of errors, all
of which will allow county staff to spend more of their
time performing customer service or program auditing.
COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS
The Committee may wish to ask the author to comment on the
bill's cost, cost neutrality, or estimated savings.
POSITIONS
Support: Alameda County Board of Supervisors
Oppose: None received
STAFF ANALYSIS OF SENATE BILL 886 (Florez) Page
5
-- END --