What’s in Bill 18-

18-501,
the Developmental Disabilities Reform Act (DDRA)?

Quality Management and Standards

Quality Management
The D.C. Developmental Disabilities Administration (DDA)
will develop and implement a new, comprehensive quality
management and improvement system.

DDA will provide prompt written notice of incidents and

patterns of concern to providers, to people who receive
services, and where appropriate to family members.

DDA will ensure that providers take prompt corrective

action to address incidents and patterns of concern and
to protect people from harm.

DDA will lead an interagency protocol to share

information that could affect people’s safety and well-
being. The protocol requires interagency coordination,
timelines for notice and corrective action plans, prompt
investigation of abuse, neglect, exploitation and death,
and implementation of all relevant laws, regulations and
policies.
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DDA must publish a publicly-available (on the internet
and in print) provider report card by no later than 2 years
after the DDRA takes effect.

DDA must include people who receive services and their

families in ongoing systemic quality management and
improvement activities.

Staff Standards
At DDA and service providers, all employees and all
volunteers who have unsupervised contact with people with
developmental disabilities will be required to complete
checks of:

1. FBI criminal background, which covers the District and

all states;
2. A new DDA Abuse and Neglect Registry, operated by
DDA, that tracks people terminated by DDA and
providers due to substantiated abuse or neglect;
3. D.C. Nurse Aide Abuse Registry and any other registries
of abuse and neglect maintained by the District;
4. List of Excluded Individuals/Entities maintained by the
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The list
identifies individuals and entities who are prohibited

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 from participating in federally-funded health programs
such as Medicaid based on convictions for program-
related fraud and patient abuse, licensing board actions
and default on Health Education Assistance Loans; and
5. Traffic record, if the person will be driving people with
developmental disabilities in the course of his or her
duties.

The DDA and providers will be prohibited from hiring a

person who has been convicted of a felony offense (specific
felonies are identified in the DDRA) or who is listed on an
abuse and neglect registry or the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services’ exclusion list.

October, 2009. For more information, visit http://dc-

ddleg.blogspot.com or contact the DDS MAC Legislative
Committee through tjsutcliffe@arcdc.net or (202) 636-2963.

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