RCOC says contract processing delays have caused late payments, while DDS says the authorization transition should not be affecting provider cash flow.
Key Takeaways
- Regional Center of Orange County has told its vendors in writing that a backlog in processing and authorizing Purchase of Service contracts has caused late payments, and has asked them to keep delivering services while it works through the queue. Executive Director Larry Landauer wrote that Early Start and Behavior service vendors have been the most affected.
- The volume behind the backlog is substantial. POS contracts authorized rose from 78,425 in fiscal 2021-22 to 151,053 in 2025-26, a 39.4 percent increase in the most recent year alone, which Landauer attributed to new subcode requirements under rate reform.
- The state and the regional center describe the same transition differently. The Department of Developmental Services said appearing on its outstanding authorization report does not prevent billing and should not affect cash flow relative to historical norms, while RCOC says its processing delays have caused late payments.
- Providers say the risk is solvency. One behavior services provider described colleagues at risk of closing after months without payment, with no cash reserve to bridge the gap.
Larry Landauer, the Executive Director of the Regional Center of Orange County, has been receiving formal complaints from the agencies that deliver its services, and some have warned they may have to suspend or terminate care. In a letter to vendors obtained by Acuity Media Network, he acknowledged why: a backlog in processing and authorizing Purchase of Service contracts has left some vendors waiting to be paid for work already performed.
His request was that they keep working anyway. “I am pleading that vendors please continue to provide services while allowing RCOC time to get beyond the backlog,” Landauer wrote. He noted that responding to a single formal complaint can take RCOC staff four or more hours to research and draft, and that expediting any one contract or payment pushes every other contract further back in the queue.
The letter is an unusually direct account of an administrative failure from the organization experiencing it, and it corroborates what behavior services providers in Orange County have been describing at vendor meetings all summer.
What Regional Center of Orange County Told Its ABA Vendors
Landauer did not frame rate reform itself as the problem. The vendor community waited years for it, and it is, in his words, “a great thing.” But he wrote that it has also created an unfunded, immense additional workload for regional centers, on top of staff members’ regular duties…