Work backwards from a published rate to the most you can pay someone, or forwards
from a wage to what the line costs the budget.
The rate is not the wage. A published rate is the whole cost of an hour. Payroll taxes,
sick leave and workers’ comp come out of it first, so the wage is always lower. At a 21.38%
burden, a $38.03 rate pays a wage of about $31.33.
Which way are you working?
The service
Pick a service and the published rate fills in. Every hourly service in the DDS
rate models is here. Leave it on set my own when you are working from a negotiated figure
rather than a published rate.
Your FMS and employer model
Straight from the Department’s Summary of Approved FMS Employer Burden. The
model list changes with the provider, because not every financial management service is approved
for both.
Workers’ compensation not included
You have to supply the comp amount
The hours
One employee. Run it again for each person on the plan. Enter the hours the way
your plan is written.
Bring it to your next meeting. Nothing you type here is saved or sent anywhere.
A flat annual comp premium changes the answer by hours worked. Percentage burden scales
with the wage, so the arithmetic is clean. A flat premium does not, so the maximum wage depends on
how many hours the person actually works. Fewer hours, less wage the premium can be spread across.
If the schedule changes mid-year, re-run this.
The FMS monthly fee is a different thing, and it is not in this number. That administrative
fee is paid by the regional center outside the participant’s individual budget.
Employer burden is not: it is a real charge against the budget on every paid hour. Counting the
fee as budget spend, or leaving burden out of the plan, are the two most common versions of the
same mistake.
Sole employer means the participant buys the insurance. In the co-employer model the FMS
holds the workers’ compensation policy, which is why their approved burden includes a comp
figure. Under sole employer the participant obtains it themselves, from the FMS where they offer
it, from the State Compensation Insurance Fund, or from an outside carrier, which is why the
Department’s table shows this line as to be determined. If nobody in the meeting can say
where the comp is coming from, the model has not actually been set up.
Working out the number is the easy part. Getting it authorized is different. That is what I do.
Empowered Futures