The Consumer Direct Personal Assistance Program, commonly known as CDPAP allows people with disabilities to hire their own personal caregiver, which can include a family member or friend. Recently, New York State overhauled the program in an effort to cut down on fraud and abuse but the roll-out of the new system has been anything but smooth.
New York now uses a single statewide facilitator, Public Partnerships LLC, to manage eligibility, hours and payment for caregivers. In the past, there were more than 600 intermediaries.
After much public outcry and legal challenges, the new system launched on April 1st but many are struggling to use it and tell News10NBC the site and app are crashing, aides aren’t getting paid and no one is picking up the phone at Public Partnerships to deal with the problems. The News10NBC Investigative team has also discovered that two women from Rochester with the same last name, had access to each other’s personal information including copies of their social security cards, bank account information and information about the people they care for.
On Monday, Governor Kathy Hochul was in Rochester for an unrelated event but News10NBC Investigative Reporter Jennifer Lewke had a chance to speak with her about the rocky transition.
Jennifer Lewke (News10NBC): “Governor, I wanted to ask you a question if I could about the CDPAP transition to PPL. Our newsroom has been flooded with calls from people who signed up for the new system, still haven’t been paid since April 1st, can’t get through on the phones, can’t get through on email. On Friday we did a story about how the company had exposed at least some caregivers personal information. Are you aware of these issues and what is the state doing to try and help here?”
Governor Kathy Hochul: “Our priority is to protect patient care and one of the reasons we had to take the step to do as every other state has done, which is to consolidate the financial intermediaries, these are not the caregivers, these are the ones who payout the salaries for the workers. Other states like California, twice our size has one financial intermediary we had 600 and I will tell you the Attorney General has brought to light countless cases of abuse where people are profiting off this money that is intended for these people that need care in their homes the people that I’m fighting for. All transitions are complicated, but I’m really proud that over 200,000 patients have been successfully transitioned out of a population of 220,000 and it reminds me of the affordable care act. I was in Congress at the time and there was some challenges with the rollout, I remember the system went down and there was a lot of issues but were cognizant of that which is why we added an extra time for people to transition to it. But those individual cases we are tracking them all down and one time there was a protest in Albany and I took department of health workers to that. I said go there and solve these problems and no one wanted to talk to us about it so I don’t know, we are focused on making sure this is as smooth as possible. There are challenges, of course, but we are determined to get to the bottom of each and every one of them.”
Jennifer Lewke (News10NBC): “It seems like PPL had some issues like this in other states during the rollout, why did you choose them and were you aware of those issues and are you worried that history might be repeating itself?”
Governor Kathy Hochul: “I was not involved in the selection process. I want to be very clear on that. That’s not something I thought was appropriate so, it was done independently evaluating other applicants and their records and other states and we feel very confident. Let me repeat 200,000 people have already transitioned…”
Jennifer Lewke (News10NBC): “Yea, but they haven’t all been paid, I guess that’s the problem… many of them haven’t gotten paychecks?”
Governor Kathy Hochul: The first paycheck was supposed to go out a short time ago. I will say this, there have been abuses of people who should not have been paid and this is what we’re getting at. And you’d have to ask, I’d like to see a report on how this program went from 2015, it was a $1.9 billion program. Our senior population and our infirmed population has not grown but guess what, 2025 it is now an $11 billion program. So, as we talk about figuring out waste fraud and abuse out of Washington, I’ve been doing that here because these are precious Medicaid dollars that we’re at risk of losing more of them from the federal government. So, I want to make sure this is efficient but I’m all about the person who needs the care and I’m not here to feather the pockets of people who are trying to abuse the system and take advantage of it.
The Governor went on to say the few “hiccups” early on are being taken care of.
Last week, PPL announced it had upped its customer support staff to more than 2,000 people. In a press release Friday, PPL said it has processed more than $120 million in payments so far and continues to processing payroll on a daily basis.
PPL directed consumers and PAs to visit pplfirst.com/cdpap to log into their PPL@Home account to check the status of their registration, access program resources or view frequently asked questions. PPL’s customer service center is also available at 1-833-247-5346 or by email at nycdpap@pplfirst.com.
The NYS Department of Health has also created a CDPAP Transition Hotline which will be staffed Mondays through Fridays from 9am to 5pm: 833-947-8666. CDPAP participants can also email the Department of Health CDPAP Transition Team for assistance at StatewideFI@health.ny.gov.
Governor: NYS and PPL working through “hiccups” in new CDPAP system WHEC.com.
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