The pushback against looming changes to New York’s Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP) continues. A group of businesses are fighting Gov. Kathy Hochul’s shake up of the program in a recent lawsuit.
New York’s CDPAP allows people who need home-based care to hire a caregiver of their choosing. Generally, this means informal caregivers. The program compensates caregivers for their services, and there are about 700 businesses that serve as fiscal intermediaries.
As part of New York’s 2025 budget passing, the State Department of Health has announced its intention to cast aside the majority of fiscal intermediaries, in favor of just one.
The lawsuit — which was filed against the Department of Health in Albany Supreme Court on Friday — alleges that the state’s changes are unlawful, as it excludes New York bidders.
“This is about survival for them,” Emina Poricanin, founder and managing attorney of the New York-based Poricanin Law, told Home Health Care News. “Their businesses are going to be gone, essentially, overnight. Everything that they’ve spent years building, they will be required to turn over to this newly appointed entity, which is not even going to be a New York entity. They’re hoping to either invalidate the law permanently, or at least stop this RFP from taking effect on Oct. 1.”
The law requires that companies hoping to serve as the sole fiscal intermediary need to have experience in another state.
Poricanin believes that the lawsuit has a fair chance of seeing success.
“There are a number of missteps in how the law was passed,” she said. “There’s a significant difference that is accorded to laws that are passed by the full legislature, which is what has happened here, and that are signed into law by the governor. There’s a presumption of legality and lawfulness about a statute like this. However, where I think the lawsuit is more likely to be successful is invalidating how the law has been implemented. With the way that the state has rolled it out through the Department of Health — there are many areas that are open to challenge.”
Last week, a group of home care companies filed a lawsuit that also took aim at New York’s plan to reduce the number of fiscal intermediaries.
Poricanin noted that she believes these will be the first of many lawsuits that will follow.
“If the lawsuit is successful, New York has to go back to the drawing board and find other ways to save money,” she said. “The reason that this was passed is because the governor erroneously thinks that she can save money by consolidating all of these fiscal intermediaries. While many will agree that this program needs a change, this is not the way to go about it.”
Ultimately, Poricanin pointed out that programs like New York’s CDPAP are integral to the provision of home care services.
“These services that we refer to as consumer directed, there’s some form of it in every state,” she said. “New York, obviously, with the population size and the Medicaid size, has probably one of the biggest consumer-directed programs. This is a bad way to go about restructuring, and putting some regulatory controls over this program. The governor has indicated, over the last few days, that she’s open to reconsidering this. I hope that is actually correct and that she will give a more thoughtful look to how this program goes forward.”
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