On Thursday, users of the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program, or CDPAP, called for transparency from the state on how taxpayer dollars are spent on home care.
CDPAP allows people with disabilities to hire people they know to be home care workers, paid using Medicaid dollars by a fiscal intermediary. Last year, New York switched from hundreds of companies paying workers to just one, Public Partnerships LLC, or PPL.
Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas and consumer-advocacy group Caring Majority held a press conference calling out the state and PPL for not providing detailed information on how the state allegedly saved money through this change.
Caring Majority is calling for legislators to include in budget negotiations a recent Senate bill which would require reporting of specific information from the program. González-Rojas is cosponsoring the Assembly version of the bill.
"Any efforts to weed out waste, fraud and abuse, should be done with good intention,"González-Rojas said. "We could have done that before we moved to PPL. We could have done an investigation."
The state claims the move was made to reduce cost on a large program, but has only provided limited numbers as far as money saved by the switch.
"A lot of that data has not been shared or presented in any sort of public fashion, so that's why we're doing this bill," González-Rojas said. "We need to hold the administration accountable. We need to make sure that we have this information to make sure the program is operating as it should.”
The bill, according to the state Senate’s website, would require reporting of data that includes how the program is utilized and how money is spent, workforce data, and information about customer support and complaints.
