Disability organizations are joining a growing chorus who say it’s impossible to meet the looming April 1 deadline to overhaul a popular home care program without eroding services.
Independent living centers, community-based organizations that help people with disabilities live on their own, on Wednesday asked Hochul to delay rolling out the new system for the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program until at least July 1. The governor is in the middle of handing the home care program over to a single company, Public Partnerships LLC, to pay workers, eliminating the more than 600 companies that currently do that job by April 1. State lawmakers and the companies that stand to go out of business have criticized the state’s slow progress to consolidate the home care program, saying that the current pace will lead some of the more than 250,000 New Yorkers who rely on its services to lose access to care.
Independent living centers are joining the organizations that have pushed back on the state’s overhaul – even though a handful of those centers will continue to get paid by the state to operate within the program after the transition is complete due to a provision in last year’s budget.
The state’s continued refusal to push back the deadline could eliminate services for 100,000 elderly and disabled people, according to the New York Association on Independent Living, which represents 32 centers statewide.
“People are going to go without services,” said Bruce Darling, executive director of the Rochester-based Regional Center for Independent Living, which is involved in the transition and will continue operating after its completion. “When you wake up and you can’t get out of bed, or when you sleep in your wheelchair and you can’t get someone to toilet you, you are going to have negative health outcomes.”
The Department of Health maintains that it is “on target” to complete the transition by the legally mandated deadline of April 1. The agency has at least started registration for 100,000 consumers, said spokeswoman Cadence Acquaviva – around 40% of the total consumers in the program. The state has also started registration for 100,000 workers, she said.
“This transition will protect home care users and deliver a better, stronger CDPAP – and the transition remains on track for completion by April 1,” Acquaviva said.
Lacey Hautzinger, a spokeswoman for Public Partnerships LLC, or PPL, said that the company continues “to see daily increases in registrations that align with completing the transition by April 1.”
Acquaviva did not respond to a question from Crain’s about how many consumers and workers have completed registration and will be ready to begin working within the new system by April 1.
Hochul has pushed to consolidate the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program because of skyrocketing growth and its burden on the state’s already-fraught Medicaid budget. The governor announced her plan to consolidate the program – which allows family members and friends to get paid as caregivers – in last year’s budget, sparking outcry from disability groups and the home care industry. The state agreed to preserve 11 regional independent living centers as subcontractors as a part of its transition to PPL, and Darling said his organization will get $4 million from the state to continue operations.
The centers are not the only parties involved in the transition that have raised doubts about the timeline. A group of health plans sent a letter to Hochul last month saying the current timeframe for the transition is “too short for the state to avoid serious disruption to care for thousands of individuals who rely on [personal care assistants] to remain independent.”
Bronx state Sen. Gustavo Rivera has also pushed the state to delay its rollout. He previously introduced a bill that would have repealed the transition to PPL as the sole administrator of the home care program. Though he recognizes that his bill “doesn’t seem to be in the cards,” Rivera said that the state should give itself more time to make sure people do not lose access to care.
“The state’s insistence that this change is reasonable, that it is happening in a reasonable timeline, is just bullshit,” he said.
