Join us in urging the Governor to invest in New Yorkers with disabilities and the people and agencies that serve them! We are calling on her to include the following requests in the 2025-26 New York State Budget:Investment in I/DD services through a 7.8% Medicaid rate increase to stabilize non-profit provider agencies.Creation of a Wage Commission to examine the roles and responsibilities of human service workers and establish fair, sustainable compensation standards commensurate with that work.Enhanced Capital Funding to help agencies modernize their operations, making them more energy-efficient and in alignment with the state’s climate goals. We need YOUR voice in this fight. Click the button below and tell the Governor to invest in New Yorkers with disabilities!
Thank you for being an advocate for people with disabilities. Consider joining the CP Family Group to stay up to date on disability issues and family supports.
People with developmental disabilities are skilled, competent employees who add diversity and value to all kinds of businesses across New York State. Yet the employment rate for working-age New Yorkers with a disability is less than half of what it is for people without disabilities. We need to work together to bridge the gap between job seekers and employers and to bring more people with disabilities into the workforce.
Thanks to Governor Hochul’s commitment and support, we are making strides and increasing employment for people with disabilities. As part of New York’s commitment toward becoming an Employment First State, we are partnering with businesses that have already committed to hiring people with disabilities, and we’re excited to build more relationships that will benefit our state economy by strengthening the workforce, increasing diversity and broadening perspectives.
Today, to kick off the month, we are thrilled to sponsor New York’s 3rd Annual DREAM Symposium, hosted by Governor Hochul’s Chief Disability Officer, Kim Hill-Ridley. This incredible event celebrates the rights of people with disabilities and the value they bring to the workforce, matches prospective qualified candidates with employers and offers workshops that can help people prepare for and succeed in employment.
This month, and all year long, we urge businesses and employers in New York State to take our Employability Pledge and let everyone know you believe in the value of a diverse workforce and the rich contributions of employees with disabilities. All of us can help by patronizing the businesses that hire people with disabilities. Those that have signed our pledge appear on our EmployAbility Honor Roll.
At OPWDD, I have prioritized bringing people with developmental disabilities into our workforce because I value their contributions to policy development and decision-making. Working together, I believe we can and will improve the number of people with disabilities working in our communities. Your help and support are invaluable to us. Thank you.
Over the past year and a half, outside consultant Guidehouse independently examined OPWDD’s developmental disabilities service system and evaluated whether using managed care to pay for OPWDD services could benefit the system and improve outcomes for people. As part of this study, Guidehouse talked extensively with stakeholders – both within New York and beyond – to understand current supports for people with developmental disabilities, their concerns, and what they, their family members, and service providers think about moving to a managed care payment model for services. Earlier this month, OPWDD released the Final Report and Recommendations that resulted from the Guidehouse assessment.
Based on its findings, Guidehouse does not recommend that OPWDD make a full transition to managed care. The Final Report does, however, offer several suggestions and considerations that OPWDD will evaluate, including the potential for using value-based payment structures to better integrate the physical and behavioral health care for people with developmental disabilities and improve access to specialized care.
OPWDD is proud to be one of the state agencies sponsoring this symposium which celebrates the value people with disabilities bring to the workforce and provides an opportunity to match prospective qualified candidates with employers.
This year the Keynote Speaker will be Mindy Scheier, Founder and CEO of Runway of Dreams.
There will be an in-person job fair and workshops on a range of topics pertaining to employment.
All – This is a follow-up reminder to anyone interested in providing input in a more structured way to the Coalition for Whole Person Supports. We are especially interested in input from self-advocates, families, and providers. There are two groups that will be providing more formal input: the advisory group and the steering group. The latter will take input from the advisory board and may eventually produce recommendations for models that support more whole person care. Volunteering does not mean you are signing on to a position, but we do want you to be open to models that are more holistic in their approach to supporting people with I/DD. Both groups will be reviewing various models and prototypes of supports and the steering committee may eventually develop recommendations for change. Volunteering for either group will require about a half-dozen hours of your time between mid-October and the end of the calendar year for meetings and conversations.
Selection Process: A smaller group, consisting of at least 1 self-advocate, 1 parent, 1 provider, and 1 knowledgeable but un-impacted party will be convened to help with the selection process for both the steering group and advisory group. Below is more detail and a proposed overview of each group. Once members for each group are selected, the members of each group will be allowed to further refine and shape their roles and procedures. The following is our proposal for the functions of each group:
Proposed Functions of Steering Committee
The steering committee will develop and vote to finalize the following core components of the coalition:
Key principles of the Coalition for Whole Person Supports
Coalition administrative matters, such as the management of the website
Oversee the work of the coalition related to policy analysis and partnerships with other organizations
The steering committee will also be responsible for the development of policy recommendations to be provided to NYS that primarily focus on the models of integrated care that the coalition reviews.
Serve as representation for the providers, individuals, and families within the region they are nominated from by aggregating ideas and feedback to include in the deliberation process and recommendations.
Proposed Functions of Advisory Board
The advisory board will provide input to the steering committee on various policy recommendations and whole person care models reviewed by the coalition. This input will include:
Support for the model(s) and contextualizing the models with the real-world issues the model(s) may solve
Opposition to the model(s) along with justifications for why the model(s) will present a challenge for the system
Implementation considerations for each model and policy recommendation under consideration
The advisory board will also raise issues in the field that the coalition should address and consider, as they pertain to whole person care. This will include the identification of additional models for review and analysis by the coalition including the entire advisory board and the steering committee
Again – Thank you for interest and willingness to consider serving on one of these groups. We hope these efforts, at minimum, help to further a conversation about ways to improve supports with the end goal being supports and services that better meet all the needs of individuals with I/DD.
This 60-minute webinar provided by Justice Center Prevention and Quality Improvement staff offers an overview of abuse prevention resources available on the Justice Center website.Thursday, October 10, 2024 11 a.m. – 12 p.m.
This 60-minute webinar provided by Justice Center Prevention and Quality Improvement staff offers an overview of abuse prevention resources available on the Justice Center website.
In November 2022, OPWDD contracted with Guidehouse, Inc. to independently assess New York’s current developmental disabilities service delivery system. The assessment evaluated whether utilizing managed care to pay for OPWDD services could benefit the system and improve outcomes for people. This examination of managed care was based on OPWDD’s Strategic Plan objective to explore ways to provide equitable access to high quality, person-centered, needs-based services.
In conducting their examination of managed care, Guidehouse engaged extensively with stakeholders – both within New York and beyond – to understand current supports for people with developmental disabilities, their concerns, and what they, their family members, and service providers think about moving to a managed care payment model for services. This included:
Participating in eight town hall and focus group sessions, including six with people with developmental disabilities, families and natural supports, and two with providers and Care Coordination Organizations;
Issuing two separate surveys to broaden Guidehouse’s feedback from people and their loved ones, as well as the provider community;
Presenting at six stakeholder and advisory board meetings to share and receive information;
Closely communicating with leadership within OPWDD and other NYS agencies to gain understanding and perspective of expertise; and
Conducting a robust literature scan, and national review of services and supports; and
Interviewing other states with managed care systems and national managed care experts.
Today, with the work of Guidehouse complete, OPWDD is pleased to release the Final Report and Recommendations that resulted from this extensive assessment process.
No decision on the managed care recommendations of Guidehouse will be made today.
I encourage you to read the full Guidehouse Final report, along with the plain language report summary now contained on our managed care webpage. Any additional thoughts or feedback on the Report can be submitted to ARPA.Inquiry@opwdd.ny.gov.
I thank everyone who contributed to this important milestone in the development and advancement of the service system that is so important to all of us. Your contributions to this conversation were essential and appreciated.
State Sen. Gustavo Rivera, a Bronx Democrat, introduced legislation this week that he said offers a compromise between Gov. Kathy Hochul’s plan to overhaul a popular home care program and the middlemen agencies who are fighting to keep their lucrative businesses operating. Will Waldron/Times Union
ALBANY — A Democratic lawmaker unhappy with the proposed changes to a widely popular home care program is pitching a last-minute legislative fix he contends would offer a compromise between Gov. Kathy Hochul’s budget leaders, who are concerned with increased Medicaid costs, and the industry that could be wiped out by its overhaul.
The bill set to be introduced by state Sen. Gustavo Rivera on Friday comes less than a month before an Oct. 1 deadline for the state Department of Health to choose a vendor to replace over 600 businesses who serve as middlemen in the popular Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program.
That program has been the focus of mounting pressure campaigns this summer since Hochul said she intended to completely restructure it within a year in an attempt to rein in what she has characterized as rampant fraud. That controversial shakeup would involve eliminating the role of hundreds of “fiscal intermediaries,” or companies that act as brokers between Medicaid and patients with long-term medical conditions or disabilities who can choose their own caregivers, including family members.
Instead, Hochul said New York would contract with a single vendor to streamline and administer CDPAP services to over a quarter million New Yorkers.
That didn’t go over well with the over 600 fiscal intermediaries scattered across the state. Over the summer, a group called Alliance to Protect Home Care spent millions of dollars attempting to get state lawmakers to halt the shakeup or reverse it entirely. They also filed a lawsuit in August to try and thwart the proposed changes.
Now, the lawmaker chairing the state Senate’s Health Committee has introduced a bill that would halt the transition to a single fiscal intermediary while implementing new guardrails to protect against some of the overspending Hochul has decried.
Rivera, a progressive Democrat from the Bronx, called Hochul’s plan an “unreasonable” attempt to fix the CDPAP program and said his legislation would create a licensing process to better regulate the cottage industry of fiscal intermediaries that has sprung up around the program in recent years.
Under the proposed bill, more power would be given to the commissioner of the Department of Health to require annual reporting from the home care agencies involved in the program, as well as require them to be licensed after April 1, 2026 through a new licensing process the department would also be tasked with creating. State officials have complained they do not have an exact number of fiscal intermediaries operating across the state.
It would also require each business operating as a fiscal intermediary to pay a one-time licensing fee of $10,000, as well as require that the businesses be prohibited from advertising their services. Both clauses come in response to complaints that the program has in some cases encouraged unscrupulous behavior.
“I recognize that there are changes that are necessary, that there have been bad actors,” Rivera said. “But instead of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, it’s electrifying the baby in the damn tub. Let’s not do that. Let’s actually think through how this could be done more efficiently.”
Other provisions in the bill include: requiring the health commissioner to make regulations and issue guidance for shuttering fiscal intermediaries; establishing a process to discipline fiscal intermediaries that do not comply; setting up a registry for caregivers who are enrolled under the program, and creating minimum training requirements for caregivers.
It’s unclear whether the bill will pacify both businesses who are angered that their services may soon be on the chopping block and Hochul, who has stood firm on the policy. Rivera said he’s spoken to stakeholders for months and is confident it would find favor among both Democrats and Republicans during the next legislative season.
The program is beloved by numerous consumers but has also been criticized for its rapidly ballooning growth in recent years, at a time when Hochul and budget officials have attempted to control exorbitant health care costs.
After the change was unveiled during last-minute budget talks earlier this year, Rivera said he had been unhappy with its potential ramifications on Medicaid enrollees who receive services through the program. Advocates of the program have argued that funneling all of the paperwork and administrative requirements through a single company could be disruptive for the nearly 250,000 thousand clients.
n August, several Democrats in the Legislature protested the forthcoming changes in a letter to federal administrators with the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare, urging them to weigh in or halt the planned switch.
Also in August, home care agencies who would be affected by the switch filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court in Albany asking a judge to issue a temporary restraining order to halt the massive contract for a single fiscal intermediary.
Whether Hochul will adjust the Oct. 1 deadline for the state to announce which vendor will receive the multi-billion-dollar contract remains to be seen.
Bryan O’Malley, who represents many of the fiscal intermediaries and has been spearheading the interest group lobbying to stop the overhaul, said in a statement he is pleased with Rivera’s bill.
“We applaud Sen. Rivera for introducing this bill and taking a stand against Gov. Hochul’s plan to gut New York’s home care program that allows 250,000 elderly and disabled to receive the health care they need from the comfort of their homes,” O’Malley said. “Handing over this critical program to one big company isn’t the answer and will potentially force thousands into expensive and overwhelmed nursing homes.”
Raga Justin is an investigative reporter covering politics and policy with the Capitol Bureau, where she was previously a Hearst fellow. She is a native Texan and University of Texas at Austin graduate and has worked for the Hearst Connecticut Media Group, the Dallas Morning News in Washington, D.C., and the Texas Tribune. Send tips, feedback or rants to raga.justin@hearst.com.
OPWDD has filed two new proposed regulations that both appear in the July 31st edition of the State Register.
The proposed regulatory updates enable OPWDD to further meet the goals in our 2023-2027 Strategic Plan. They include key elements and changes related to both supported decision-making and employment services, which will further support people in their independence. Both were also drafted in response to, and informed by, stakeholders.
Supported Decision-Making
OPWDD is adding regulation Part 634, which includes rules necessary to implement New York Mental Hygiene Law Article 82, to ensure the appropriate adoption of supported decision-making practices within the OPWDD service system.
This new regulation does several things, including:
outline the supported decision-making process
set criteria for both formal and informal supported decision-making agreements
prescribe the authority of a formal supported decision-making agreement and a third party’s obligation to honor it
define the Care Coordination Organization’s role in the supported decision-making process
update notice requirements in existing OPWDD regulations
OPWDD is also replacing subdivision 635-10.4(h) with new language. Language was replaced to define what Pathway to Employment Services are, expand the types of allowable services, re-order the language to match other employment and vocational services to make the regulation clearer, require community-based vocational experiences for the person to assist in building a career path and set requirement for billing, training and documentation.
ENYDDA 