Healthcare/Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS)
Healthcare/Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS)
DRC helps people get the essential health care they need. We make sure people get services to live in the community rather than institutions. Our work follows the principles in the Supreme Court’s Olmstead decision. To learn more, keep reading.
DRC’s Healthcare/HCBS team works to ensure that people with disabilities have access to essential health care services and a full range of community long-term services and supports to enable them to live in the community and avoid institutionalization, consistent with the principles of the Supreme Court’s Olmstead decision.
Issues we focus on include:
- Ensuring Access to Medi-Cal Home and Community-Based Waivers that enable people with disabilities who would otherwise need institutional services to live in the community.
- Ensuring Access to Medi-Cal services, including Early and Periodic Screening Diagnosis and Treatment (EPSDT) for children up until age 21.
- Ensuring Access to Medi-Cal services, including durable medical equipment.
- Ensuring people with disabilities who want to return home to the community from an institution, or avoid institutionalization have the services and supports they need; and
- Ensuring Access to In Home Supportive Services (IHSS).
I.N. v. Kent
More than 4,000 children across California have been approved by the state for Medi-Cal in-home nursing care. Yet, many of these hours go unfilled, placing an enormous strain on families, and resulting in an unacceptable risk of medical complications, hospitalizations, and placements outside the family home.
Kelley v. Kent
The State of California has failed to implement a provision of the ACA that requires Medi-Cal to implement eligibility rules intended to prevent one spouse from impoverishment while paying for at-home care for a spouse with a disability. On July 6, 2017 DRC with pro bono lead co-counsel McDermott Will & Emery and co-counsel Bet Tzedek Legal Services, Western Center on Law and Poverty, and Justice in Aging filed a class action suit in state court alleging violations of the federal Medicaid Act, the Americans With Disabilities Act, and other state laws resulting in the imminent risk for plaintiffs of institutionalization.
Jerry Thomas, et al., v. Jennifer Kent
Disability Rights California (DRC) filed a lawsuit in October 2014 on behalf of three individuals with disabilities against the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) and its Director. DRC is challenging DHCS' failure to provide medically necessary services that allow the plaintiffs to stay at home rather than in nursing homes or hospitals. Their claims are based on the “integration mandate” of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which says people with disabilities have the right to receive services in the most integrated setting.
Esther Darling et. al. v. Toby Douglas
If you or someone you know has been denied Community Based Adult Services (CBAS), the program that was replaced Medi-Cal ADHC on March 1, 2012, Disability Rights California has put together materials to help you understand your rights and how to file an appeal of the denial. Contact Disability Rights California to receive a copy of these materials, by calling 1-800-776-5746 or emailing darling@disabilityrightsca.org.
Mark Chambers v. City and County of San Francisco
On September 18, 2008, Judge William H. Alsup granted final approval of the settlement agreement in Chambers et al. v. the City and County of San Francisco. This action was originally filed October 11, 2006, by six residents of Laguna Honda Hospital and the Independent Living Resource Center (ILRCSF) in San Francisco, alleging discrimination in the form of unnecessary institutionalization under the Americans with Disabilities Act. These residents prefer, and have been determined to be capable of, living in their own homes and in the community.