The new statewide standards for FMS providers

The short version

• Nothing changes about your rights. You still choose your FMS, and you can still change it at any time. The directive says so in as many words.
• Every FMS now has the same written obligations to you — a grievance process with a deadline, a plain-language service agreement, monthly budget statements, 60 days' notice before they change or stop your service, and a set procedure if you move to another provider.
• San Diego Regional Center now oversees every FMS in the state, wherever you live. Your own regional center still handles your budget, your spending plan and any payment problem on your account.
• Every provider is being reviewed against the new standards, starting in late November 2026. Most families will hear nothing. If your provider falls short, your regional center has to write to you — see If you get a letter below.

This is a directive, not guidance. DDS documents starting D- are mandatory, and this one says every SDP FMS provider must meet these standards "to be and remain eligible" to provide the service. It is issued under the part of the law that lets DDS make binding SDP rules until formal regulations exist (Welfare and Institutions Code 4685.8(p)(2)).

Why this matters more than it sounds

An FMS sits between your budget and every person you pay. Until now, what one had to do for you — how fast it paid, how it handled a complaint, how much notice it gave before changing something — depended largely on the provider and on the regional center that had vendored it, years earlier, under whatever it asked for at the time. DDS says as much: the same requirements "were not applied" when each provider was first approved.

That is a large part of why the same question gets different answers from different providers, and why FMS is the largest single category of complaints to the state's SDP Ombudsperson. The standards do not make every provider identical. They set a floor that every provider has to stand on, and they write it down where you can read it.

They also shape how providers set their own policies from here on. A provider's grievance process, its notice periods, its service agreement and its transfer procedure all now have to be built to these standards — so the documents you are handed when you enroll should change too.

What changed

One regional center now vendors every FMS

Every SDP FMS provider has to be vendored through San Diego Regional Center (SDRC), whichever center approved it originally. For this one purpose, SDRC's area covers the whole state. A provider keeps its existing vendor number and uses it statewide; one that holds several numbers for the same service code keeps one, and the rest end.

The work is split cleanly between SDRC and your own center:

So a problem with a payment on your account still goes to your own service coordinator. A concern about how a provider operates in general — whether it meets the standards at all — is SDRC's to act on, and regional centers are told to send provider-level questions there.

Sixteen standards, published

Attachment A to the directive sets out what every provider must do, in sixteen numbered sections: who can be a provider, how much money it must have in reserve, who it must employ, how it handles complaints, customer service, enrollment, your budget, employing people, paying people, taxes, and moving or ending service. We have written each one out in plain language, with what it means from where you sit.

Read all sixteen standards

Every existing provider is reviewed

Existing providers do not reapply from scratch. Each had 45 days to send SDRC a completed review checklist (Attachment B), its supporting documents and any changes to its program design. SDRC then reviews them in groups of at least six, one group after another, each review lasting no more than 45 days. A provider that passes transfers to SDRC. One that does not gets 30 days to fix what was found, and can lose its approval to serve SDP participants if it does not.

A provider that sent nothing by the deadline is treated exactly as though it had been reviewed and failed. That is in the directive, and it means the first correction periods could begin within days of the deadline rather than months.

See what happens when

New providers face a higher bar to get in

Anyone applying to become an SDP FMS provider now applies to SDRC through the DDS Provider Directory, has to clear three preliminary requirements set in April 2025 before an application is even considered, and has to meet the standards before being approved rather than after. The standards themselves set the entry bar: among other things, at least twelve months of experience running financial management services in a Medicaid self-direction program, and $500,000 in cash reserve or available credit.

What you can now expect from any FMS

Most of the sixteen standards are about the inside of a provider's operation — accounting systems, tax filings, staff qualifications. A good number are things you will see directly, and those are worth knowing, because they are now the same everywhere. Every SDP FMS provider must:

• Give you a grievance process in writing, and investigate and resolve a grievance within the timeline it sets — never more than 60 calendar days — with a corrective plan where the grievance is upheld, and a written answer to you. (Standards 5.1, 5.2)
• Publish how and how fast it answers calls, email, mail and other messages — given to you and posted on its website. (6.1)
• Offer a toll-free number, an email address and a secure way to communicate, accept Video Relay Service calls, and provide translation and interpreters if English is not your preferred language. (6.3, 6.4, 6.5)
• Sign a plain-language service agreement with you before services start or change, and give a signed copy to you and to your regional center. It has to set out what they do, what you do, their fees and approved burden rate, and how they would help you move to another provider. (7.3, 7.4)
• Send you an accurate budget statement every month, and tell you and your regional center within five business days if spending is running over or under or something unauthorized turns up. (4.6, 8.4)
• Pay complete, valid invoices within 30 calendar days. (14.8)
• Give you at least 60 days' notice before discontinuing or changing your service — including dropping the model you use — unless your planning team finds a health and safety reason for less, in which case they must tell your regional center and SDRC at the same time. (7.3, 12.2)
• Move you within 60 days if you leave, send your records to the new provider within 30, and keep paying your workers and vendors without a break while it happens. (12.1)
• Tell you when a new worker is cleared to start — background check done, DDS clearance received, and the service authorized in your spending plan. (11.11)
• Stay out of decisions it profits from. A provider may not make recommendations in your planning meeting about services it stands to gain from, may not sell you other paid services, and may not have a financial interest in anyone your budget pays. (4.8)

These are minimums, not a description of good service. A provider can meet every one of them and still be hard to reach, or slow on the day a paycheck is wrong. Thirty days to pay an invoice is the ceiling, not the target. The standards are the floor; what you are choosing between is everything above it. Choosing an FMS has the questions that tell providers apart.

If you get a letter about your FMS

DDS wrote two template letters for regional centers to send families. If one arrives, this is what it means.

“Your FMS vendor is being asked to address an issue”

This is the correction-period letter (Attachment C). SDRC found that your provider has not met one or more of the standards, and it has 30 days to fix them. Your regional center must send it within five business days of the correction period starting, and is told not to hold it back while the fixes are pending — the point is to give you as much time as possible.

• Your provider keeps working for you during the correction period, and keeps paying for everything in your approved spending plan, including providers who have already worked.
• You do not have to do anything. You can stay. You can also move now, without waiting to see whether the provider fixes the problem.
• The letter does not say what the problem was. It may be paperwork; it may be something that matters to you. It is reasonable to ask your provider directly what SDRC found and what they are doing about it.

“Your FMS vendor no longer can provide services”

This is the termination letter (Attachment D). The provider did not fix the problems in time and its approval to serve SDP participants is due to end on a stated date. Your regional center must send it within five business days of being told.

• You need to choose a new provider to keep your services running. The choice is yours; your service coordinator has to help you find the providers available to you, with support from DDS's Self-Determination Program Branch.
• Contact your service coordinator straight away. Moving takes time, and the aim is no gap in anybody's pay.
• Your current provider must keep paying for services in your spending plan until your last day with them, and must hand over what the new provider needs.
• It may not end after all. If the provider fixes the problem or appeals before the date, the termination is stopped. Your regional center then has to write to you again — the directive allows about seven business days from the outcome to your letter.

If you get either letter and are not sure what to do, your service coordinator is the right first call — both letters name them as the person to help. If you want to look at other providers in the meantime, the provider list filters by regional center.

What has not changed

• Your right to choose and change your FMS. The directive repeats that a participant may change providers at any time, and keeps every right in the Lanterman Act's planning and appeal sections.
• Who pays for the FMS. The regional center still pays the provider's fee outside your individual budget.
• Your plan is still yours. The standards require a provider to follow your IPP, certified budget and certified spending plan — not to shape them.
• Telling your FMS about plan changes. The September 2022 directive on FMS payments and notifications still applies, including the rule that your FMS is told when a change to your spending plan is final.

For providers and facilitators

Questions from existing providers and from anyone seeking SDP FMS vendorization go to SDRC at FMS.vendorization@sdrc.org. Regional centers' questions go to DDS's Self-Determination Program Branch at sdp@dds.ca.gov. A regional center whose board has adopted insurance requirements above SDRC's limits may keep applying them, but had to tell SDRC and DDS within 30 days of the directive; no other local variation is allowed.

Sentinel Four, which publishes this site, is one of the providers these standards apply to, and is going through the same review as everyone else. Nothing on these pages describes how any provider, including us, has fared in it.