Legislators, advocates warn April 1 switch to single CDPAP vendor risks thousands losing care

Advocates, Independent Living Centers and provider groups warned at a joint Senate-Assembly budget hearing that New York's plan to move the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP) to a single fiscal intermediary, Professional Personal Liaisons (PPL), is far from ready and risks widespread disruption on the April 1 deadline.

Supporters of CDPAP said the program enables people with disabilities and older New Yorkers to hire and direct their own caregivers. Consumer Directed Action of New York and the 11 Independent Living Centers that run fiscal-intermediary services for CDPAP told legislators participants are facing confusing notices, language barriers, broken online forms and long call-center waits. Consumer-directed organizations and several Independent Living Centers said many consumers have not been fully enrolled yet and that official enrollment metrics posted by the Department of Health mix partially started registrations with completed enrollments, obscuring how many people will actually have a paid caregiver attached on April 1.

Why it matters: CDPAP pays family members and other chosen assistants to provide in-home personal care. If people lose access to caregivers because of administration problems, families and hospitals will face last-minute crises, advocates said. A disrupted transition could push people into more costly institutional care or leave them without essential supports.

Who said what: Consumer Directed Action Executive Director Brian O'Malley said the pace and paperwork for enrollment are unrealistic. "Even if PPL were a well-oiled machine, there's no way this transition could finish on time," he told the committees. Independence-services advocates described repeated cases where consumers received the wrong forms, cast-in-English communications or phone operators without effective translation.

Technical problems, translation and staffing: Independent Living Centers described repeated software errors in the vendor's enrollment platform, and said PPL's phone queue staffing had inconsistent language support. Several groups said PPL's initial enrollment emails and text messages direct people to click links and supply personal data without prior outreach or translation, a practice critics warned could expose people to fraud or simply frighten those who lack digital experience.

Numbers in dispute: State officials have said the vendor is meeting daily sign-up targets; advocates and providers say the state's totals combine incomplete "started" registrations with fully completed enrollments and therefore overstate readiness. Independent Living Centers reported only a few thousand of the roughly 280,000 consumers they expect had both a completed consumer file and a fully enrolled personal assistant in PPL's system at the time of testimony.

What advocates want: Delay and more supports. Consumer groups urged the Legislature to delay the April 1 deadline or require a phased rollout, and to fund outreach, translation and an expanded facilitator role for local ILCs and community organizations. Several speakers asked the committees to require PPL to document how many consumers have both a completed file and an enrolled, payroll-ready caregiver before the deadline.

State position and next steps: Department of Health officials told the committees they plan outreach and that the vendor is ramping. Advocates said they appreciated the outreach but want written, verifiable benchmarks and an explicit contingency plan before April 1 to prevent involuntary loss of service.

Ending: Advocates framed the issue as a public-health and budgeting one: a failed transition risks higher short-term costs if patients are forced into hospitals or nursing facilities and higher long-term human costs for people who lose independence and basic daily supports. They urged the Legislature to adopt a cautious, documented approach to protect consumers while the vendor systems stabilize.