The state is relaxing the deadline for its overhaul of a popular Medicaid-funded home care program, giving users another month to register with a private company that’s set to take over the program by April 1.
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration is extending the registration period for people who receive home care services through the consumer directed personal assistance program – which allows individuals to hire immediate family members and friends as caregivers – through April 30, the Department of Health said Monday. The extension comes a week before the Georgia-based company Public Partnerships LLC, or PPL, is set to become the state’s sole payroll processing entity, replacing the roughly 600 firms responsible for paying hundreds of thousands of workers through the program.
The Health Department will guarantee that personal assistants receive retroactive payments for the services they provide during the month of April, the agency said.
The state’s “late registration window” is a measure to ensure that consumers who do not register with PPL ahead of the April 1 deadline do not lose access to care, according to the Health Department. Less than half of consumers who receive home care services through the program – roughly 139,000 – have completed their registration with PPL, Politico reported Sunday. Approximately 55,000 consumers have fled the program in favor of receiving services through a licensed home care agency instead of CDPAP, but there are still tens of thousands of elderly individuals and people with disabilities who have not completed the transition.
“I want this to be a seamless transition for everyone who would like to remain in the CDPAP program,” Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald said in a statement, adding that consumers can still receive care and caregivers will be paid if they complete registration by the end of April.
The extension of the registration deadline does not impact the third-party businesses, known as fiscal intermediaries, that pay personal assistants through the program. The companies that provide payroll services will be prohibited from doing so on April 1.
Lagging registration numbers have led state lawmakers and home care advocates for weeks to press the state to push back the timeline. Powerful health care labor union 1199 SEIU – perhaps the most influential backer of the state’s home care overhaul – called on Hochul last week to issue an executive order to delay the transition, which the union said would prevent workers from losing pay and consumers from going without services.
Hochul has pushed forward on the home care transition, which the state expects will save roughly $1 billion per year. The state’s spending on the program has skyrocketed in the last decade, reaching an estimated $11.2 billion in 2024, according to the Health Department.
