This Act provides school-based speech-language pathologists and audiologists who hold a current Certificate of Clinical Competence in speech-language pathology, (“CCC-SLP”) or audiology (“CCC-A”), issued by the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association and who hold a current state license to practice from the Delaware Board of Speech Pathologists, Audiologists and Hearing Aid Dispensers with a base salary level of Master’s Plus 30 credits. Professionals who have a CCC-SLP or CCC-A ASHA certification have met the following rigorous academic and professional standards: 1. Successful completion of requisite academic courses by an accredited program. 2. Successful completion of supervised clinical practicum experiences in the practice of speech-language pathology or audiology. 3. Successful completion/passing score on the National Praxis Exam in speech-language pathology or audiology. 4. Successful completion of a Clinical Fellowship. This Act allows speech language pathologists and audiologists who have completed the course work required by state guidelines to apply for an additional 15 credits to move to the Master’s Plus 45 level. This Act contains a grandfather clause that allows school-based speech-language pathologists and audiologists in Delaware who have a master’s degree, a current license, and have worked as a speech-language pathologist for 20 or more years but do not have Certificate of Clinical Competence to, be granted the equivalent pay grade of Master’s Plus 30 with the same additional coursework criteria for moving to Master’s Plus 45 level.
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This Substitute Act does all of the following: (1) Expresses the General Assembly's and Governor's opposition to the 2019-2024 National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Draft Proposed Program ("Draft Proposed Program"). (2) Requests the Department of Justice review the Draft Proposed Program, and any other actions taken by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior targeted at approving an oil and gas leasing program, and take any appropriate legal steps to prevent the sale of oil and gas leases off the coast of the State of Delaware. (3) Directs the Department and the Coastal Zone Industrial Control Board to enforce compliance with the Coastal Zone Act. (4) Directs the Department to review Delaware law to ensure these laws properly reflect Delaware's environmental policy objectives for purposes of their use in the consistency review process under the Coastal Zone Management Act. (5) Directs the Department to report to the Chair of the Senate Environmental, Natural Resources, and Energy Committee and the Chair of the House Natural Resources Committee any legislative changes that are identified as necessary. This Substitute Act differs from the original Act in that it replaces Section 2 and 3 of the original Act with a new Section 2 that provides the Department of Justice with more flexibility to prevent the sale of oil and gas leases off Delaware’s coast.
This Act prohibits drilling for oil or natural gas in Delaware’s coastal zone and territorial waters and precludes DNREC from issuing any permits in connection with the development of offshore drilling infrastructure, whether proposed for Delaware territorial waters or waters outside of the State.
Far too many Delawareans have been personally affected by addiction and substance use disorder and have experienced the tragedy of watching loved ones suffer from this chronic disease. Nearly 2,000 individuals in Delaware suffered a non-fatal overdose in 2017, but data suggest that many of these individuals continued to be prescribed opioid pain medications or did not receive substance use disorder treatment. This Act links specific patient care data related to overdose collected by the Office of Emergency Medical Services or the Office of the State Epidemiologist with data in the Delaware Prescription Monitoring Program (“PMP”). This Act will foster best practices in the use of health information, to ensure that consistent, humane, evidence-based treatment and care is available and provided to those suffering from substance use disorder or non-fatal overdose. Linking this data may assist prescribers and pharmacists in the identification of substance use disorder and promote safer prescribing. This Act also provides prescriber and dispenser identified data to the PMP Advisory Committee and the Addiction Action Committee, which will enable these committees to do the following: 1. Appropriately identify prescribing and dispensing patterns of concern. 2. Make recommendations to the PMP administrator. 3. Provide targeted education to those individuals whose prescribing or dispensing practices are outliers from the Delaware average. This Act also makes technical corrections to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual.
This Act establishes the Delaware School Safety and Security Fund to allow certain eligible public schools to partially or fully fund projects intended to improve school facilities and training relating to safety or security. The Department of Education shall administer the fund. This Act is effective upon appropriation.
This Act establishes the High Needs Educator Student Loan Payment Program. The Program allows qualified applicants to apply for a payment from the State to the applicant’s lending agency, to pay a portion of the applicant’s student loan debt. The purpose of the Program is to encourage Educators to work and remain working in certification areas in which Delaware has a shortage and to encourage Educators to work and remain working in Delaware’s hardest-to-staff Schools. The amount of the award shall be no less than $1000 and no more than $2000. This substitute redesignates the chapter where this language will be placed in the code.
The state is currently funding service providers at 75% of the market rate established in a 2014 study that was done by DHSS. This bill would mandate an increase in the rates paid to service providers according to the recommendations of the market study, so that by fiscal year 2021 the state would fund service providers at 100% of the benchmarked rate. These rate increases are necessary to increase the hourly wages of Direct Support Professionals (DSPs), to improve recruitment and retention of these positions, to decrease staff turnover, and to decrease position vacancies. Along with the corresponding costs for program oversight, direct supervision of DSPs, and training, stabilizing the DSP workforce with increased pay is essential to keep people with I/DD safe and integrated to the maximum extent possible in their local communities. The bill also requires that the adequacy of the rate system be evaluated against performance measures that are commonly used to assess program quality.
This Act amends Titles 14, 16, 17, 26, and 29 of the Delaware Code to prohibit the use of lead paints on outdoor structures such as bridges, water towers, playground equipment, highways, parking lots, and utility towers and poles, in order to protect public health from the dangers of such paints. More specifically, Section 1 of this Act substantively amends Title 16 to add a new Chapter 30M setting forth the general prohibition of use of lead paints on outdoor structures after specified effective dates. Section 2 of this Act amends Titles 17, 26, and 29 to reference back to the new Title 16 Chapter 30M prohibitions. Section 3 requires the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control to develop regulations governing the removal of lead paint from outdoor structures consistent with this Act.
This Act promotes the use of primary care by doing the following: 1. Creating a Primary Care Reform Collaborative under the Delaware Health Care Commission. 2. Requiring all health insurance providers to participate in the Delaware Health Care Claims Database. 3. Requiring individual, group, and State employee insurance plans to reimburse primary care physicians, certified nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and other front-line practitioners for chronic care management and primary care at no less than the physician Medicare rate for the next 3 years. Despite the demonstrated value of primary care, access to primary care for Delawareans has become increasingly difficult because insurance reimbursement rates fail to support an adequate infrastructure. The national average for primary care spending for an insurance plan is between 6% and 8% of the insurer’s total medical expenditures. Studies recommend, and some states are actively implementing, a 12% to 15% spending rate to have an effective system. Delaware’s average insurance spending on chronic care management and primary care is between 3% and 4%. Nationally, insurance reimbursement for primary care averages between 120% and 140% of Medicare rates. In Delaware the commercial market reimburses independent primary care at rates as low as between 65% and 85% of Medicare rates. Reliable data regarding insurance spending is difficult to obtain due to a combination of contractual restrictions and an absence of mandatory health care price transparency requirements applicable to commercial plans in Delaware This Act simultaneously enacts short-term and long-term solutions to strengthen the primary care system in this State. While the Primary Care Reform Collaborative and the Delaware Health Care Commission study and development long-term recommendations, requiring insurers to reimburse for chronic care management and primary care at the Medicare rates will stabilize existing resources and provide immediate benefits. The Primary Care Reform Collaborative and the Delaware Health Care Commission have reliable data and information from the Delaware Health Care Claims Database to use in this analysis and to make recommendations that will strengthen the primary care system in Delaware.
This bill will increase the public transparency of education funding information by directing the Department of Education to: 1. Establish, in collaboration with stakeholders, a statewide approach for districts and charter schools for reporting expenditures at the school level and the school’s share of central office expenditures so that per-pupil expenditure data is consistent and comparable across the State. 2. Report per-pupil expenditure data with key information that provide context on differences in funding such as school type, student demographics, and student outcomes. 3. Provide optional trainings to increase understanding of the data. As a result, this bill is intended to enable all taxpayers, parents, and schools to understand their school spending and resources in order to make data-driven decisions for students.