NEWS

More oversight urged at adult day care centers

Nick Muscavage

ALBANY — Adult day care programs in New York, through lack of regulations and licenses, may be putting disabled elders at risk, according to an audit from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

Many adult day care programs operate without much oversight, the audit contended.

“Absent a universal licensing or registration requirement, no agency has a complete accounting of all the adult day service programs that are operating in the state,” DiNapoli said in a statement.

The audit found there are 17 adult day care programs funded directly by the state that are overseen by the state Office for the Aging. Other programs may be partially funded by counties and therefore overseen on the local level.

But there are an estimated 500 adult day care services operating in the state without regulations or licenses. So it’s unclear specifically how many there are and who is operating them, the audit said.

“While the providers that have state contracts are being closely watched – this demonstrates that there is a clear need for a more comprehensive system of regulation to ensure the well-being of many more vulnerable New Yorkers,” DiNapoli said.

The state Department of Health is tasked with monitoring Medicaid as a whole, but since adult day services are available under the managed long-term care model, the agency can rely on the managed long-term care plans to oversee the programs, DiNapoli said.

More than 15,000 New Yorkers annually receive day-care services through the managed care plans, and they receive about $175 million yearly through Medicaid, the audit found.

The audit reviewed the program through the state Office for the Aging from April 2011 through March 2015.

In a statement within the audit, the state Office for the Aging said it has been fulfilling its duties of monitoring adult day services funded by the state, but also said it would increase the frequency of onsite monitoring as well as evaluate current regulations to determine if they need to be updated.

Also, the state Department of Health said it too has stepped up oversight of the programs in conjunction with the Office for the Aging and state Medicaid Inspector General.

“The department intends to continue to work with NYSOFA and OMIG to evaluate and mitigate the risks identified in the OSC’s audit report,” the Health Department stated.

Regulators have found problems in the past.

In 2014, four employees of an adult daycare in Brooklyn were arrested for falsifying documents and providing inadequate healthcare. The nursing home in charge of the day care paid a $6.5 million settlement for Medicaid fraud following the probe conducted by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office. The day care was ordered to be shutdown.

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