AB 637 Proposal

Alta California Regional Center (ACRC) has continued tireless efforts to recruit and maintain quality licensed psychologist vendors to provide Intellectual and/or Autism evaluations. These evaluations are essential in the review for regional center eligibility. While ACRC does maintain staff psychologists, the referral volume far exceeds the evaluation capacity of our staff. With a recent average of 149 monthly client applicant referrals, we depend on having qualified psychologist vendors available to provide these evaluations. At this time, we continue to have vendors notify ACRC that they are reducing their availability or are no longer able to offer any evaluation timeslots to ACRC due to the more competitive rates from insurance and private pay clients. This has drastically impeded our ability to meet our required timelines for the client intake process, delaying eligibility determinations and subsequently access to needed services and supports for which they would otherwise be entitled.  

Alta California Regional Center is submitting an AB 637 Proposal to develop an innovative means of providing these necessary services. ACRC’s request falls under the proposal type “service contracts with providers” in accordance with Welfare and Institutions Code § 4669.2(a)(3).  We are requesting approval to move forward with a standardized rate for service with all vendored psychologists under service codes 115, 116, 117 and 056 that exceeds the statewide median rate for service. We formally request a waiver to Welfare and Institution code § 4691.9(a) to establish rates for psychological evaluations for existing vendors and new vendor applicants. Thank you for your time and consideration of this proposal.