CDPAP Changes Continue Apace Despite Opposition: Learn All About It

When the dust settled on the New York State 2024-25 fiscal year budget passed in April, there was plenty of disappointment to go around in the disability community.

Many were especially concerned about a major administrative change that would be made to the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP), a change implemented without consumer input.

CDPAP is a Medicaid program that provides at-home health care services for eligible chronically ill or physically disabled individuals who have a medical need for help with activities of daily living (ADLs). It gives recipients — roughly 250,000 New Yorkers participate in the program — flexibility and freedom in choosing their caregivers, and enables them to live in their communities of choice instead of, say, in institutions.

Currently, the program’s administrative duties, such as wage and benefit processing, are done via some 600 New York-based fiscal intermediary companies. But the change calls for just one corporation — which is required to come from outside of New York — to administer the entire program, creating, in effect, a monopoly. While this entity will subcontract with some of the existing FIs and Independent Living Centers, these FIs will no longer be able to, among other things, maintain personal records for personal assistants or for consumers’ service authorization or plan of care.

Proposals for that state contract are due on or before Aug. 2, 2024. The anticipated started contract date is Oct. 1, 2024.

There’s more. Politico reports that an “initial slate of changes is around the corner: State health officials plan to roll out a recalibrated billing structure for fiscal intermediaries on Aug. 1.”

The news site also has some interesting color: Out-of-state companies “are already eagerly vying” for the FI contract, with at least one, Public Partnerships LLC, spending some $6,500 a month on a lobbying firm to give it “‘strategic advice.'”

Advocacy

Those worried about the very likely disruptions and disarray resulting from this change might want to message their legislatures. At least two advocacy groups have made this easy:

Alliance to Protect Home Care, formed by the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Association of New York State (CDPAANYS), has an easy-to-fill-out form, found here.
My Health My Caregiver, which the Politico report says is a new entity launched by a group of fiscal intermediaries (that declined to disclose its members, citing the ongoing RFP process), has a form found here.
CDPAANYS also invites interested people to an informational webinar on July 25. Register here.