Health officials are lauding early progress on the state’s overhaul of a growing Medicaid-funded home care program, pushing back against industry efforts to thwart the transition.
The Department of Health last week kicked off a highly anticipated consolidation of the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program, or CDPAP, a home care program that allows people to hire their loved ones as home health aides. The state has tapped a single company, Public Partnerships LLC, to manage the program, and is aiming to register 240,000 people before the firm takes over on April 1.
In the first week of the transition, almost 5,000 people started the registration process with Public Partnerships LLC, also known as PPL, according to data released Friday by the Health Department. The company received 15,000 calls from existing consumers and caregivers in its first week, DOH said, noting that registrations will increase in the coming weeks as health officials, PPL and the more than 30 home care agencies partnering with the company continue their outreach to existing consumers.
The Health Department is touting its progress amid growing pushback to its home care overhaul from the roughly 600 companies currently administering the program. The companies, which manage payroll for home health aides and are slated to go out of business once the transition is complete, have questioned if the state can pull off the transition in a 10-week timeline without upending care for consumers.
It may be too early to tell if the transition will meet its deadline; Cadence Acquaviva, a spokeswoman for the Health Department, said that the transition is on schedule to be completed by April 1 and that the agency expects the pace of registrations to ramp up in the coming weeks. The industry group opposing the shift disagrees. The current pace indicates that roughly 88% of people who use the home care program won’t be enrolled by the April deadline, according to Bryan O’Malley, executive director of the lobbying group Alliance to Protect Home Care, one of the most active lobbying firms trying to stop the transition and represents some of the companies slated to go out of business.
“This already shoddy transition now guarantees that service will be disrupted for those most in need,” O’Malley said.
The transition, which officially began on Jan. 6, triggered dueling ad campaigns between the state and the industry. The Alliance to Protect Home Care, which recently shelled out six figures for an ad blitz that included a plane circling the venue of the governor’s State of the State address, spent more than $4 million on advertising last year to pressure the state to halt its home care overhaul. In response, the state launched its own six-figure ad campaign featuring Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald, who attempted to “dispel myths” that the transition would disrupt home care services for New Yorkers.
Despite the pushback, the state has maintained that it will stick to its April 1 deadline. Gov. Kathy Hochul has pushed to complete the home care consolidation this year to reach her cost-cutting goals, as New York spent an estimated $9 billion on the program last year.
“Even as some business groups continue to push false claims about this process, the facts and data show that the transition is proceeding efficiently and effectively,” McDonald said in a statement Friday.
