Q&A
Impact of reimbursement policy on providers
2:33:25
·
78 sec
Council Member Stevens highlights the challenges posed by the city's reimbursement policy, particularly for smaller organizations. Commissioner Park acknowledges these difficulties and outlines efforts to bring in new providers.
- The reimbursement policy requires providers to have significant upfront funds, which can exclude smaller organizations
- Late payments from the city put organizations at a financial deficit
- DSS has added about a dozen new providers over the last two years, including some small organizations
- The department offers technical assistance and support, including a 'capacity building agreement' to help new organizations navigate city contracting
Althea V. Stevens
2:33:25
some even with that, that gets really hard because even with the model it has.
2:33:29
Right?
2:33:30
Because we we run on a reimbursement, policy that also takes a lot of people out of running.
2:33:35
You have to have a certain amount of downment, and you have to have the money upfront to put it forward.
2:33:39
So we're going to the same group of people which is why I think when we're thinking about payment, we're putting people in the cycle of poverty because now they have multiple contracts with the city who they have to pay upfront, and then we know that they're all being paid late.
2:33:51
And so even by definition of the way we're thinking about giving out contracts, we are putting organizations at a deficit.
Molly Wasow Park
2:33:59
Right.
2:33:59
So we've added about a dozen new providers over the last 2 years.
2:34:03
I think one of the very few, silver linings of growing very rapidly is that we have been able to bring in a number of new providers.
2:34:11
Some of those are relatively large organizations that just haven't done work with DHS before, but many of them are quite small organizations.
2:34:19
We use we do recognize that that contracting with the city can be complicated.
2:34:25
We are looking to provide technical assistance and support to organizations to do that.
2:34:30
So we have, we offer, for example, what we call our capacity building agreement, which is, really hands on technical assistance work to support not for profits that wanted to do business with the city.
2:34:43
Okay.
