Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Association of New York State

Theresa Rusnak, Associate 
Bond, Schoeneck & King, PLLC
Friday, November 13, 2020 at 10:00 AM

Public comment is now open on Governor Cuomo’s sweeping Medicaid eligibility changes, which appeared in the New York State Register on July 15, 2020. 

Send your comments today at STOPLTCCUTS.ORG.

While there are some positives in these regulations, such as the shift in assessments from every six months to annually, these changes were designed to make it harder to access long-term supports and services (LTSS) and creates new levels of bureaucracy in seemingly arbitrary ways intended to limit or discourage people from seeking help to begin with. 

Comments on the regulations are open for 60 days from when they were published, or Monday, September 14 at close of business.

On Friday, July 3, 2020, the NYS Department of Health made two amendments to their website regarding the RFO for fiscal intermediaries in CDPA. 

1. The Anticipated Contract Start Date, formerly listed as July 1, 2020, was changed to Upon Approval of the Office of the State Comptroller. 

2. A new date was listed for Anticipated Award Announcements as July 17, 2020.

CDPAANYS will be carefully monitoring any and all additional changes or updates regarding awards, and will keep our membership informed in real time. 

Governor Cuomo’s message that you are safer in a nursing home is wishful thinking, at best, and gross negligence, at worst. Throughout this pandemic, home care workers, whether personal care aides, home health aides, or personal assistants, have risked their lives and the lives of their families, often for minimum wage. Because these workers are going in and out of people’s homes to provide care, and not stationed at hospitals or nursing facilities, they have been overlooked for the adequate provision of masks, gloves, and other PPE. Yet people have managed and the fatalities of senior and disabled residents living at home, while not officially tallied, are low. Meanwhile, 25% of funding, or $42 million meant for wages for their home care workers, was cut in the middle of this pandemic.

Given the Governor’s failure to invest in community-based care, it is no wonder he believes that residents are safer in a facility than they are receiving care at home, but the numbers tell the real story. A report by the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Association of New York State found that while people were generally scared that they or their personal assistant could contract COVID-19, a staggering 75% of people receiving home care through consumer-directed personal assistance were scared that the disease would force them into one of these facilities. Their fears are valid, when one out of every four COVID-19 confirmed deaths in NY occurred in nursing homes – and one out of three in the month of June. The statistics are even worse for Black, brown and immigrant New Yorkers.

As the Governor himself has said, we are all entitled to our own opinions, but not our own facts. We encourage the Governor to stick to the facts and not jeopardize the lives of seniors and people with disabilities by trying to create a false narrative about the safety of these institutions.

As part of CDPAANYS’ work identifying and bringing light to disparities and gaps in services related to COVID–19, we issued a survey to collect data on the impact of the pandemic on consumers and workers.

It was widely acknowledged that many health conditions that require long-term care increase the rate of mortality from COVID-19, but the conditions for people using community based services like CDPA did not receive nearly as much attention. CDPAANYS wanted to know how the pandemic was affecting consumers and their access to services, and sent a survey to members in April asking about changes in staffing and access to personal protective equipment (PPE), among other disruptions. We used the results to create a report that we shared with lawmakers and journalists in order to bring attention to the growing long-term care crisis and advocate for legislative solutions.

You can read the final report from the survey, “The Impact of COVID–19 on Consumer Direction in New York State,” by clicking here.