A home health care provider has alleged that the Hochul administration manipulated and selected one company in a backroom deal to oversee the state's $9 billion home health Medicaid program, which is accused of fraud.
The Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program allows Medicaid recipients to hire a relative or loved one as a paid personal home care aide.
To keep costs down for home health programs, state health departments are relying on hundreds of businesses and nonprofit organizations that operate with minimal oversight, essentially acting as payroll agents and intermediaries between Medicaid and caregivers. A company, Public Partnership LLC, has been selected to replace the company.
The changes mean home care agencies (financial intermediaries) across the state will have their contracts terminated as part of the review, which they are fighting to block.
Carlos Martinez, executive director of BRIDGES, a Rockland County-based home care agency, said at an April 9 meeting that state disability officials told him and other current home care contractors that the state He said he was informed that Public Partnership LLC would take over the entire financial intermediary role.
He claimed the revelations showed there was fraud in the bidding process.
“I remember this so well because I was struck by the moment I was directly told by a government official that the state had already decided which company would be chosen as the financial intermediary for the entire state of New York.” Martínez said in a written statement. an affidavit has been provided in a lawsuit filed Another home care provider, Freedom Care LLC, sued the state.
Home care providers argued that the bidding process was still underway when state officials announced that Public Partnership had won the contract.
“This conclusive testimony proves what all of Albany has been hearing since April, as we have asserted: Governor Hochul and the Department of Health from the beginning was rigged,” Akiva Shapiro said. Partnered with Gibson Dunn, representing plaintiff Freedom Care.
“This backroom deal with PPL must end now before it endangers New York's home health care program and the hundreds of thousands of people who depend on it.”
Even before the lawsuit, home care providers had been fighting to prevent the state from letting a single large contractor oversee the program.
CDPAP has grown in popularity over the years and serves 200,000 patients.
As it has grown, a lack of oversight has caused the program's costs to spiral out of control, and prosecutors are targeting it with massive fraud charges totaling tens of millions of dollars, the Post reported earlier this year.
Hochul took on vested interests in state budget negotiations with the state Legislature earlier this year, winning changes to centralize oversight to control costs.
But when she struck a deal with Local 1199 SEIU, a powerful health care worker union, to unionize personal care home helpers and increase their salaries and program costs, critics raised eyebrows. I hid.
Hochul's office defended the CDPAP review and denied rigging the bidding process in favor of public partnerships.
“Our reforms will protect home health care users and taxpayers by ending years of waste, fraud, and abuse in CDPAP. And importantly, who will be selected as a result of this procurement? “As of April, no state official knew about it,” a Hochul spokesperson said. he said on Sunday.
“The procurement process was handled by the state Department of Health based on certification language approved by the state Legislature and CDO. [chief disability officer] We did not draft the RFP or evaluate responses. We look forward to delivering a stronger and more effective CDPAP as part of the transition, which will take effect by April 2025. ”
