Update:  On April 9, 2025, parties to a federal lawsuit against New York State’s Department of Health filed a joint proposed preliminary injunction, approved by the judge on April 10, 2025, extending the date for transition to May 15, 2025  and creates new protections for consumers and their personal assistants.

The lawsuit challenges the state’s transition from over 600 Fiscal Intermediaries (FI) administering the program, to only one selected by the state. Public Partnerships LLC, or PPL, was chosen by the state as the new single FI, and began transitioning consumers in January.

The transition was supposed to be complete by April 1, 2025, but there were many challenges and roadblocks. Of the disabled people enrolled in the program, the DOH reported that a large amount have still not transitioned to PPL and/or left CDPAP for other personal care services.

According to the now approved agreement, all consumers would need to be onboarded with PPL by May 15, 2025 and then personal assistants would need to be brought into the PPL system as employees no later than June 6, 2025 unless an extension is provided by the court.

This proposal, was approved by Judge Block and will allow many Personal Assistants who haven’t been able to register with PPL to be employed by their prior Fiscal Intermediary during this transition.

Consumers are now broken into three groups, or categories. Category A is people who have already transitioned both their care and any of their personal assistants’ employment fully to PPL. The DOH would be responsible for making sure PPL pays these personal assistants fully, either back to April 1st, or the date the personal assistant was last paid by their previous FI.  Category B includes consumers who have fully transitioned their care to PPL, but some or all of their personal assistants have not become fully employed at PPL yet. Consumers can decide if they want those personal assistants to be paid by their previous FI until they are fully transferred to PPL. This would be as long as those FIs are still operating, in good legal standing and agree to not “make misrepresentations” about the transition to any consumer or their personal assistants.  The final group, Category C, are consumers who have not yet fully transitioned themselves to PPL. Consumers in this group could choose to have their previous FI pay their personal assistants until they are fully transitioned.

The agreement will have no impact on those who have already completed registration with PPL. It provides a limited window for additional consumers and workers to complete their registration with PPL.  It also creates an expedited onboarding program through PPL that would assist with transition if the consumer does not elect their previous FI or the previous FI is unavailable or unable to continue payments. The preliminary injunction also lists substantial efforts the DOH and PPL must make to assist and robustly reach out to consumers and personal assistants who are still transitioning over.

Background:  In April of 2024, the New York Executive and the New York Legislature released and enacted Article VII budget language bills changing, in addition to many other changes, the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (“CDPAP/CDPAS”) under the New York State Medicaid program requiring a transition from a local fiscal intermediary (“FI”) to a statewide FI, by April 1, 2025. See, Part II of the HMH Art. VII (S.8307-C/A.8807-C) of the Governor’s budget.  Click here for NYS DOB FY 2025.  For our prior post on this with more information click here.