Linda Clark, Health Care Controversies Practice Area chair, was interviewed for the Crain’s New York Business Health Pulse newsletter article “Home Care Providers Form Coalition to Explore Options Against Health Department.” The article highlights the formation of a new statewide association of licensed home care agencies and fiscal intermediaries, the New York Advocates for Home Care (NYAHC), that aims to fight New York State’s attempts to dismantle the state’s Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP).
The NYAHC announced in a press release that it has retained Barclay Damon to provide legal services regarding the NYS Department of Health’s (DOH) denial of contracts to hundreds of qualified CDPAP providers in February 2021. In the article, Linda notes that there are significant legal issues to explore surrounding the state’s request for offers (RFO) process that reapproved just 68 fiscal intermediaries out of the 450 that had existed since the start of the program in 2012.
In the NYAHC’s press release, Linda says, “From what we are learning so far from NYAHC members, there seems to be no rational basis for the denial of many of these contract awards. Additionally, DOH seems to have followed an arbitrary evaluation process of the applications and in some cases did not even follow some of their own RFO guidelines.”
The implication of having just 68 fiscal intermediaries to enact home-based care for 139,000 New Yorkers state wide is a disruption of services. The NYAHC’s goal is to work with the DOH on a fix. If they are unable to fix the current situation, they may pursue legal action in the courts.