Latest news with #CDPAP
NBC News
2 days ago
- Health
- NBC News
Mother with cerebral palsy struggles to hire aides after private equity takeover
Renee Christian, a single mom with cerebral palsy, lives in Buffalo, New York, with her 12-year-old daughter. Although her condition forced her to spend most of her childhood at a nursing home, she has resided in her own home for years with the help of personal assistants she hires under a New York State Medicaid program. In April, however, Christian's life was upended when the state forced her and her assistants to work with a new company administering the nation's largest consumer-directed personal assistance program, called CDPAP. One by one, she lost nearly half her assistants because they said they did not receive the proper pay for their work, Christian said. She now fears for her future living at home where she needs help getting dressed, doing laundry and cooking meals. 'I'm trying to hire new staff, and I am very good at navigating technology,' Christian, 37, said. 'But it's hard when you have to tell your new hires, 'I can't guarantee you're going to get paid on time or get the appropriate amount of hours.'' Christian is not the only one affected by the state program's recent takeover. NBC News spoke with nineconsumers and personal assistants who described multiple problems since Public Partnerships LLC (PPL) won the $1 billion, five-year contract in 2024, replacing roughly 600 entities that had been administering the program. The issues range from assistants receiving checks for zero dollars to problems arranging for direct deposit, onboarding new workers and clocking hours worked. PPL, which has a staff of 1,400 on the New York program, is owned by two private equity firms. Its takeover as the program's sole administrator triggered an avalanche of complaints from consumers unable to reach anyone to answer questions and assistants unpaid for hours they worked and unhappy with reduced health insurance benefits, according to lawmakers, consumer advocates and the consumers and assistants interviewed by NBC News. Before the transition to PPL, roughly 280,000 consumers were participating in the CDPAP program, according to the New York Department of Health. Since PPL took over, some 80,000 have left the program, the department said. 'A lot of these folks need the services being provided by the program,' Gustavo Rivera, a New York state senator who represents constituents in the Bronx, told NBC News. 'It's likely they dropped out because of difficulties making the program work or they switched to programs that are more expensive.' Rivera has scheduled hearings in August about what he calls the botched transition to PPL. At a cost of $9 billion a year, New York's CDPAP is the largest personal assistance program in the nation. It allows consumers like Christian to directly hire the folks who help them pursue their lives rather than rely on a staffing agency. At-home programs like New York's are less costly than providing institutional care, research shows. In 2024, according to one analysis, a semi-private room in a nursing home cost an average $9,277 a month nationwide. That's 43% more than a home health aide costing on average $6,483 each month. Amanda Lothrop, chief operating officer for New York State's Medicaid program, told NBC News that the transition to PPL aimed to eliminate the former program's administrative inefficiencies while protecting taxpayers. She said fraud and abuse had marred the previous program, but the state has identified very few cases. A 2022 audit by the Office of Medicaid Inspector General in New York, for example, uncovered only $46,000 in overpayments in the program, a 99% accuracy rate. In response to questions from NBC News, PPL and the New York state health department said together they had identified 30 instances of home care workers under the previous system billing consumers who were hospitalized or dead, five cases of workers billing for work with consumers who were out of the country, one worker claiming to work for two people at the same time and another who claimed to be in two places simultaneously. More than 200,000 workers are in the CDPAP program. 'In partnership with PPL,' the department of health said in a statement, it 'is using enhanced data and monitoring tools to protect program integrity, support consumers, and take timely action when issues arise.' Meg Fitzgerald, a PPL spokeswoman, said in a statement that the company's 'systems and centralized control processes would have been able to identify and prevent these violations.' The contract New York State awarded to PPL is a recent example of private equity's increasing involvement in home health care, said Aditi Sen, managing director of research and campaigns at Americans for Financial Reform, a nonprofit nonpartisan organization that advocates for fairness in the U.S. financial system. Last month, Sen published a report detailing the industry's forays into home health care entitled, 'Wall Street on Your Doorstep: Protecting Home Care from Private Equity Abuses.' 'The private equity industry is looking for any streams of steady public funding,' Sen said in an interview. 'As advocates have secured more funding for home and community-based services, that has resulted in the private equity encroachment.' She said the next step for researchers is to analyze the quality of home care after private equity gets involved. Founded in 1999, PPL calls itself an industry leader 'in financial management services for consumer direction, serving consumers throughout the U.S.' As for the difficulties in the New York program, the PPL spokeswoman said in a statement: 'The transition to a single fiscal intermediary required a significant element of education and, in some cases, a change in practices for submitting and approving time. We have been committed to providing various methods of extensive education and resources to all stakeholders. Ultimately, we strive to provide the accountability this program deserves.' Three CEOs in five years Private equity firms have taken over wide swaths of the health care industry in recent years and ill effects on care have been well-documented in independent academic research. The firms typically acquire companies or doctors' practices using debt and hope to sell them within five to seven years at a profit. This requires the firms to improve the financial results of the companies they buy, often firing employees or cutting services to slash costs. The private equity firms bought PPL three years ago. Studies on hospitals and nursing homes have found significant deterioration in patient outcomes after private equity takes them over. Other research has found that prices rise significantly after private equity acquires a practice or operation. According to Sen, private equity firms have rolled up hundreds of small home health and home care chains into large companies like Comfort Keepers, Help at Home and Accentcare. Combined, private equity-owned companies offering home and community-based care services are second only in size to chains owned by insurers Humana and UnitedHealthcare, Sen found. Many acquisitions by private equity-owned chains have been in companies offering home and community-based services for people with physical, intellectual and developmental disabilities, Sen determined. Pediatric home care for children with disabilities is another area of interest as is the consumer self-directed care industry, PPL's focus. Private equity acquisitions are not always easy to track. PPL's website does not identify its owners, but a recent court ruling disclosed the two private equity firms that control it — DW Healthcare Partners of Toronto and Park City, UT, and Linden Capital Partners of Chicago. Although both the firms' websites list other companies they have invested in, neither lists PPL as an investment. After winning the New York State contract, PPL tried to keep its ownership secret. In a lawsuit filed last year against New York's Department of Health by a home care company over the transition to PPL, the company's private equity owners were identified in a document that PPL requested the judge keep under seal. If the information were made public, the company argued, it 'may put individuals in danger and/or allow them to become targets of violence.' Public disclosure would also increase the risk of 'unwanted attention and harassment,' PPL said. The company lost that battle and the document became public. Fitzgerald, PPL's spokeswoman, declined to elaborate on the company's desire for secrecy in its ownership. Neither DW Healthcare nor Linden Capital Partners responded to emails seeking comment for this story. PPL also objected to a 2024 Medicare rule affecting home care organizations. The rule mandated that at least 80% of Medicaid payments go to compensation for direct care workers, such as personal assistants, not a company's 'administrative overhead or profit.' Fitzgerald said the company's objections were not about worker compensation. Rather, she said, the company believed the rule would 'make it more difficult for states to initiate new self-directed programs and to maintain small self-directed programs.' Participants in the CDPAP program aren't the only ones experiencing upheaval in the transition to PPL. Recently, Vince Coppola, PPL's former chief executive, and Maria Perrin, its former president, departed unexpectedly. PPL has had three CEOs over the past five years, Fitzgerald said. Filling out forms for hours Tara Murphy said she enjoyed working as a personal assistant in the CDPAP program for 25 years. But when she tried to switch to PPL, she encountered multiple difficulties, she said. 'Their technology is so hard to navigate, it took me four and a half hours to fill out their forms,' she recalled. 'I uploaded them nine times before they were finally accepted in their system.' Murphy's hourly pay with PPL was 2% less than she had previously earned, she said, and she never received the correct pay under the new program. 'I ended up having to quit my job and leave my consumer,' she said. Rivera, the New York state senator, said he hopes to gain some answers from state officials on the PPL transition at the Aug. 21 hearings in New York City he co-sponsored with state Sen. James Skoufis. 'Last year, when it was pushed upon us in the budget process I said back then that I thought it was a bad idea,' Rivera said of the switch to PPL. 'Unfortunately, what I heard from my constituents is the transition was indeed bungled.' Meanwhile, Christian, the Buffalo mom who has lost five personal assistants since PPL took over, is especially worried about how it might impact her daughter. 'My daughter is 12 years old, she needs me here for her,' Christian told NBC News. 'If I have to go into a facility because I can't get care in my home, where is she going to go?'
New York Post
15-07-2025
- Business
- New York Post
Worker at Hochul's hand-picked CDPAP payment firm allegedly siphons off cash meant for participants
ALBANY – A worker with the firm at the center of Gov. Kathy Hochul's scandal-plagued Medicaid homecare program allegedly siphoned off cash from potentially thousands of participants. The employee of Public Partnerships, LLC — the company hand-picked by Hochul's administration to act as the sole payment go-between for the state and participants in the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program — had been falsifying the direct-deposit information of up to 10,000 participants, sources told The Post. 3 Gov. Kathy Hochul's Medicaid homecare program is faced with yet another scandal. Mike Groll/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul The New York program pays for people to take care of disabled or elderly loved ones and recently hired the company to eliminate the loads of middlemen payment firms and instead funnel everything through it. The company discovered last week that one of its employees was directing homecare participants' paychecks to fraudulent bank accounts, including some overseas, sources said. 'There was an agent who worked on the phones who got fired a week ago, who was misdirecting direct deposits to the wrong accounts and sending money to offshore accounts as well,' a PPL employee told The Post. The source said the FBI was involved, though a rep for the federal agency would not confirm the existence of an investigation when asked by The Post on Tuesday. It was not immediately clear how many assistants have been impacted by the breach, but the number could be upwards of 10,000 people, sources said. It also is not clear how long the scheme has been going on or exactly how much Medicaid cash has been lost, though the figure could feasibly reach hundreds of thousands of dollars since PPL began paying assistants in April. 'It just keeps getting worse,' a PPL worker said of the massive turmoil surrounding Hochul's attempt to consolidate hundreds of payroll middlemen companies under one firm. A rep for PPL confirmed to The Post that an employee was 'terminated for not following the approved procedures' and is being 'investigated' but did not comment further, including to refute the allegations. Hochul's office did not comment on the allegations that funds were being siphoned into fraudulent bank accounts. 3 Hochul and state legislators slipped a provision into last year's state budget to consolidate hundreds of murky payroll middlemen firms for CDPAP into one firm hand-picked by the state. goodluz – The alleged theft is only the latest scandal to taint the program. The firm has already been dealing with a phishing scam using phony Google Ads to target participants into coughing up their personal information, though it says none of its systems have been compromised. 'We have confirmed that fewer than 100 [personal assistants] out of more than 225,000 across New York State were victimized by this scam,' PPL said in a statement. 'We will ensure that every PA is reimbursed for any lost wages.' The governor's office said PPL notified the state of the phishing scam and that it was proof that the move to consolidate the firms was working. 'When PPL reported a recent phishing scam, the State ensured PPL took action to address it,' Hochul spokesperson Sam Spokony wrote in a statement to The Post. 3 PPL President Maria Perrin is resigning within the next 60 days — one of several leadership changes amongst the private equity firm's top ranks in recent weeks. YouTube/Public Partnerships PPL 'This immediate review and response would not have been possible under the old CDPAP system, which was plagued by hundreds of wasteful middlemen.' But Hochul also has been under intense scrutiny from critics on both sides of the political aisle who've accused the state of rigging the bid for PPL and ramming through the transition on an unrealistic timeline, amongst other complaints. The Post was first to report that serious career prosecutors from the DOJ's Consumer Affairs Branch are investigating PPL and the CDPAP transition. Earlier this month, the state reached a legal settlement with the New York Legal Assistance group to push back a deadline for people to register with the new firm. The company source said they believe PPL's president, Maria Perrin, is taking the fall for the breach after she announced her resignation internally over the weekend. 'I think they needed someone to take the fall for that, and Maria happened to be handy, and she just resigned, she's gone,' the employee said. A company rep denied that Perrin's departure had anything to do with the data breaches. Perrin's departure comes amid a slough of resignations at the top of echelons of the private-equity-owned firm's ranks. PPL's head honcho, CEO Vince Coppola, resigned last week, the Albany Times Union said. The Post's well-placed PPL source said Executive Vice President Vicente Armendariz, who helped lead the New York transition, resigned within the past month. The company rep did not comment on Armendariz. 'With the CDPAP transition nearing completion and the operation entering a steady state, Maria is confident that PPL is prepared to succeed when she exits in the fall,' a PPL representative told Politico, which was first to report her resignation Monday. The governor's office and the state Department of Health have been defending the firm for months, claiming that as recently as May 15, 98% of 198,000 fully-onboarded CDPAP assistants at the time had submitted timecards and received paychecks. But Ilana Berger, political director of Caring Majority Rising, a group that has fought to reverse the transition, wrote in a blistering statement. 'Between this breach and a leadership exodus, it's clear PPL is in complete chaos. 'A competent organization would have had systems in place to immediately address a security issue like this – instead, PPL has made a bad situation significantly worse, creating widespread confusion for workers and consumers who depend on CDPAP for their wages and care. This is yet another glaring sign that PPL is fundamentally unfit for the job.'
Politico
07-07-2025
- Health
- Politico
CDPAP approaches an inflection point
Beat Memo More change is on the horizon for Medicaid's consumer-directed personal assistance program. The state Department of Health is tightening the eligibility criteria for new enrollees in the popular home care program and other in-home personal care services, POLITICO Pro's Maya Kaufman reported last week. The long-planned tweak, which dates all the way back to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration, is expected to save the state $300 million annually by slowing enrollment growth. 'This policy change will help ensure that New York's Medicaid program remains fiscally sustainable and able to continue supporting high-quality home care for those with the greatest need,' said Danielle DeSouza, a spokesperson for the state Department of Health, in a statement. The announcement coincides with the ongoing transition of CDPAP to operate under the auspices of financial services company Public Partnerships, LLC, in lieu of hundreds of fiscal intermediaries statewide. State lawmakers will scrutinize that process during an oversight hearing Wednesday on the issues that enrollees, workers and other stakeholders are experiencing as part of the consolidation effort. The deadline for Medicaid recipients and their personal assistants to enroll with Public Partnerships — also known as PPL — has been repeatedly delayed as part of a proposed class-action lawsuit filed by a group of consumers. The parties in that case recently pitched a settlement agreement that would extend the deadline to Aug. 1 and require the state Department of Health to send informational letters to every consumer not enrolled by then, among other terms. A judge now needs to decide whether to approve it. ON THE AGENDA: — Wednesday at 10 a.m. The Senate will hold a hearing on the state's CDPAP transition. — Wednesday at 2 p.m. The state Early Intervention Coordinating Council will meet. — Thursday at 6 p.m. NYC Health + Hospitals holds a public hearing on a proposed community center in the Bronx. GOT TIPS? Send story ideas and feedback to Maya Kaufman at mkaufman@ and Katelyn Cordero at kcordero@ Want to receive this newsletter every weekday? Subscribe to POLITICO Pro. You'll also receive daily policy news and other intelligence you need to act on the day's biggest stories. What you may have missed — Gov. Kathy Hochul's administration unveiled its first-ever Master Plan for Aging last week . It is the culmination of years of work by hundreds of government officials, long-term care executives, health experts and aging-focused advocates to develop strategies to help New Yorkers maintain good health and remain in their communities as they age. Its proposals included Medicaid rate reform, interagency integration of social and health care services, establishment of a benefits coordination office, a caregiver tax credit and reimbursement program, procurement of regional direct training centers, eviction prevention and guardianship improvements. Odds and Ends NOW WE KNOW — The health care industry is now the biggest employer in 38 states — and has remade the U.S. economy. TODAY'S TIP — Eating beans can make you healthier. STUDY THIS — Rates of irritable bowel syndrome and other digestive issues rose significantly during the Covid pandemic, researchers found. What We're Reading — HHS devises a legal playbook for future grant terminations. (STAT) — Tobacco report shows progress on anti-smoking policies worldwide. (Washington Post) — A top FDA official overrode scientists on Covid shots. (New York Times) Around POLITICO — Via POLITICO's Lisa Kashinsky, Andrew Howard and Elena Schneider: Republicans just cut Medicaid. Will it cost them control of Congress? — Megabill hits health care for immigrants, including legal ones, hard, Amanda Chu reports. — Judge rules HHS removal of online health guidelines was illegal, Lauren Gardner reports. MISSED A ROUNDUP? Get caught up on the New York Health Care Newsletter.
Politico
02-07-2025
- Politics
- Politico
So long, Ritchie!
IT WAS FUN WHILE IT LASTED: Let's pour one out for our friend Rep. Ritchie Torres. The highs, the lows, the CDPAP press conferences and letters… it will all be missed. The Bronx Democrat revealed today his own seven-month chapter of teasing a primary challenge against fellow Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul is coming to a close. 'I'm unlikely to run for governor,' Torres said this morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe. 'I'm going to keep my focus on Washington D.C.' The admission of what looked to be true for some time is the end of a winding path taken by Torres, a moderate whose staunch advocacy for Israel has made him anathema to the lefties who launched Zohran Mamdani to the Democratic nomination for mayor. And we'll miss Torres' Hochul-hating era. It was just 226 days ago — on Nov. 18, 2024 — that Torres said New York state is riddled with 'misgovernance' at a breakfast with Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman and the Citizens' Budget Commission. The comment quickly made Torres the most prominent critic of Hochul within the party — something he solidified with a weeklong schedule of Hochul hating. (He also spent his days blocking what seemed like everyone on X, including Hochul's staffers.) When he first hinted at a gubernatorial run, Joe Biden was president, Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado was days away from publishing a New York Times op-ed calling for 'the same politicians' to get lost, and Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik looked to be headed to the U.N. But in a matter of months, the heat from millennial moderates hoping to challenge Hochul — like Torres and Republican Rep. Mike Lawler — has cooled down. While still unpopular, the governor's poll numbers have steadily ticked up since her September nadir of 34 percent favorability. A Tuesday Siena poll shows 42 percent of voters view Hochul favorably. The same poll found she would trounce Torres in a primary 49-10, with Delgado not far ahead at 12 points. During Torres' period of gubernatorial flirtations, he never surpassed 10 percent in polls of a potential primary. With Torres gone, Hochul's main detractors are now on the periphery. Trump-backed Stefanik's possible run for governor has taken the air out of speculation Lawler will run for governor. And Delgado, who faces an uphill battle in beating his boss, is running a primary campaign that actively tries to court Mamdani's supporters by vowing to tax the rich. In a statement, a spokesperson for Torres said the Bronx Democrat wants to stay in Washington to fend off looming federal cuts to programs like Medicaid. Torres' district has the highest Medicaid enrollment in the nation. 'Congressman Torres is singularly focused on protecting his community from these ongoing attacks,' spokesperson Benny Stanislawski said. 'The Bronx needs a champion in Washington, and Congressman Torres is — and will continue to be — that champion.' The seven months Torres spent needling Hochul were not all for naught. He did launch a statewide 'listening tour' as part of his exploration of a gubernatorial bid. And his intrepid travels brought him to Buffalo and other far-flung places like 'Rockland County, Westchester County, Long Island' and 'all throughout the city,' his spokesperson tells us. Torres may have to keep busy anyway. Long-shot mayoral candidate and former Assemblymember Michael Blake took a thinly-veiled shot at him on X today, raising questions of his own ambitions for Congress. And veteran Bronx pol and Trump fan Ruben Diaz Sr. might even throw his hat in the ring. 'A Democratic Primary between @RitchieTorres and @MrMikeBlake ?' Diaz posted today on X. 'The Bronx will become alive again! Very interesting! Maybe I should jump in too. Wao! The three of us !! A rematch Just for fun!' — Jason Beeferman FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL LABOR STRONG: Zohran Mamdani still has a general election fight ahead of him but his path is being smoothed by labor unions — including those endorsing him now after backing Andrew Cuomo in the primary. Hotel workers, building workers and nurses rallied with the presumptive Democratic nominee for mayor today in Midtown Manhattan in a show of force punctuated by enthusiastic chants of 'Labor! Power!' 'Zohran speaks the language of workers,' said Brendan Griffith of the New York City Central Labor Council. New York State Nurses Association's Nancy Hagans defended Mamdani against personal attacks on him. 'Let me say labor is united with Zohran against any form of bigotry in our movement, whether it's antisemitism, racism or xenophobia,' she said. 'And we certainly won't tolerate Islamophobia against our future mayor.' Also present in the clamor of members cheering Mamdani and seeking selfies with him were representatives of the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council and 32BJ SEIU, which had backed Cuomo until his embarrassing primary defeat. They're looking forward now, endorsing Mamdani against incumbent mayor and independent candidate Eric Adams, who was their pick for City Hall in 2021. 'I am confident of not only winning a City Hall that puts working people first,' Mamdani told the group, 'but finally bringing an end to the chapter in our city led by our current mayor to raise rents on those same workers, to price those same New Yorkers out of this city — and to do all of those things while collaborating with the Trump administration.' Adams, who has a good working relationship with Trump and avoids criticizing him as other Democrats do, has rejected that he is beholden to the White House. — Emily Ngo FROM CITY HALL ADAMS' TAKE: Adams notably didn't condemn Trump's attacks on Mamdani and suggested that even asking him about the president questioning the citizenship status of his opponent was a distraction. 'Everyone is going to try to pull me off of the record of providing for this city. They're going to have a mic in my face: 'Are you going to do this? Are you going to do this? Are you going to do this?' Let me tell you what I'm going to do: I'm going to deliver for New Yorkers,' he said at an unrelated press conference today. Trump had praised Adams Tuesday, saying he was 'a very good person' that he'd 'helped' on his federal corruption case. Adams publicly thanked the president for pushing the narrative — which wasn't accepted by the judge in the case — that the mayor had been politically targeted for criticizing then-President Joe Biden on immigration policy. Adams also got a boost from Al Sharpton this morning, when the civil rights leader called on Cuomo to step aside and let Adams and Mamdani 'have a battle over what is best for New York.' Cuomo's campaign pushed back, saying that Trump supports Adams. The mayor called that 'almost an insult for anyone to state that anyone is going to control a person who has been independent for 40 years.' — Jeff Coltin IN OTHER NEWS — SPECIAL ELECTIONS INCOMING: A look at who could fill the seats that'll likely be vacated by state Sens. Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Sean Ryan and Assemblymembers Mamdani and Harvey Epstein (City & State) — KRISTI NOEM HINTS MAMDANI ARREST: 'The Department of Homeland Security has authorities that have never been utilized before …' the Department of Homeland Security Secretary said at a meeting. (NOTUS via THE CITY) — MORE CONDUCTORS, MORE EXPENSIVE?: A bill backed by the The Transport Workers Union that's headed to Hochul's desk would require every subway train to be staffed with a conductor and an engineer — potentially limiting the MTA's ability to significantly cut costs. (Crain's New York Business) Missed this morning's New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.
New York Post
19-06-2025
- Health
- New York Post
NY pols probe controversial $9B taxpayer-funded program for home-health-care aides: 'Significant concerns'
State lawmakers are launching a public hearing to probe New York's controversial $9 billion taxpayer-funded program that connects residents with home-health-care aides. State Senate Health Committee Chair Gustavo Rivera (D-Bronx) and state Sen. James Skoufis (D-Hudson Valley) said they will be calling on people to testify about the troubled Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program, or CDPAP. 4 State Senator James Skoufis announces that the Department of Motor Vehicles will remain in West Haverstraw. Tania Savayan/The Journal News via Imagn Content Services, LLC Advertisement 4 New York State Senator Gustavo Rivera speaking at a podium. Kevin C Downs forThe New York Post The program initially came fire for its alleged rampant abuse and waste involving the under-regulated middlemen companies that were connecting residents with aides as part of the state-funded Medicare initiative. Gov. Kathy Hochul's administration then did away with the private go-betweens — but its awarding of the massive job to one firm in a no-bid contract only created more questions and outcry. Advertisement 'We are going to lay out in clear terms how the transition worked, what didn't work, how it happened and what are the things to learn to make sure that individuals being served by the program continue to be served,' Rivera said. 4 Gov. Kathy Hochul's administration then did away with the private go-betweens Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Post Rivera said 'fallout is still being felt' from the governor's consolidation move – noting that some workers have not been paid or have left the program, while patients have not been getting the care they need and others have ended back in nursing homes 'or worse.' The program has already come under scrutiny from the feds, who The Post reported earlier this month are probing the governor's selection of Public Partnerships, LLC, as the sole 'fiscal intermediary' for CDPAP. Advertisement Skoufis said how that contact was awarded will be part of the state hearing's scope. 'We do have questions. We do have concerns,' he said. 'I have significant concerns about just how this company was awarded the contract and were they awarded the contract fairly.' 4 Rivera said 'fallout is still being felt' from the governor's consolidation move – noting that some workers have not been paid or have left the program. zinkevych – Hochul administration rep Sam Spokony said in a statement, 'New York State protected home care and prevented a fiscal crisis by putting an end to the waste, fraud and abuse of an old system. Advertisement 'The vast majority of consumers and workers have reported a positive experience with the new statewide fiscal intermediary.' The state lawmakers' hearing on the issue will be held July 9.
