On March 23, 2000, GNYHA presented comments to a special joint meeting of the Codes and Regulations and Fiscal Policy committees of the State Hospital Review and Planning Council (SHRPC) concerning the emergency adult day health care (ADHC) regulations adopted by SHRPC on February 3, 2000. GNYHA's comments both acknowledged recent DOH efforts to address GNYHA members' concerns regarding the emergency program regulations and reiterated GNYHA's continuing concerns with proposals that would fundamentally change ADHC reimbursement policy. With respect to the program regulations, DOH presented the committees with several modifications that respond to GNYHA concerns, including proposals to 1) permit certain ADHC registrants to attend programs fewer than five hours, provided a majority of registrants attended for five hours or longer; 2) permit programs to admit registrants up to 10% above the approved capacity of the program on a given day, provided that the average annual occupancy does not exceed the annual approved capacity for the program; and 3) eliminate a requirement for programs to conduct registrant reviews that duplicate existing continued stay assessments of registrants. These modifications will be presented for adoption at the next full SHRPC meeting, scheduled for April 6, 2000. With respect to reimbursement, DOH pledged to establish a Transportation Workgroup to work on the development of a new transportation payment system for ADHC programs, reflecting a representative cross-section of program types and transportation arrangements. GNYHA commended the establishment of this workgroup, but urged that no further action be taken to pursue additional broad-based ADHC reimbursement changes. For further information, contact Scott Amrhein at GNYHA.