PPL touts high customer satisfaction amid turbulent home care transition

Public Partnerships LLC, the company tapped by the state to help administer a popular Medicaid home care program, conducted a large survey that found that, actually, people like their services. The results are in stark contrast to PPL’s vocal critics, who have charged that its mishandling of a massive transition will lead to the deaths of disabled people.

In order to address what she called widespread fraud in the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program, or CDPAP, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law a measure that permits just one fiscal intermediary to operate in the state. The program allows friends, family or independent home care workers to get paid through Medicaid to provide assistance to disabled New Yorkers. Fiscal intermediaries act as middlemen to help process payments, and New York had hundreds before the state chose PPL as the only company allowed to operate in New York.

PPL conducted a survey, the results of which were shared exclusively with City & State, of over 52,000 consumers and workers that use CDPAP and completed their registration with the company to gauge their satisfaction. The survey found the average rating for overall satisfaction to be 4.04, on a scale of 1 to 5, and for satisfaction with the timekeeping systems to be 4.27.

The survey posed the questions “On a scale of 1 to 5 … how has your experience been working with PPL?” and “On a scale of 1 to 5… how satisfied are you with the timekeeping method you selected?” About 16,000 consumers or their designated representatives and roughly 36,000 personal assistants responded to the survey. PPL also asked respondents about whether they had unanswered questions from the transition, and 20% said they did.

The survey was done online through Microsoft Forms in English, though respondents could translate it through their browser settings. PPL performed the survey anonymously, so demographic and geographic data was not available.

A spokesperson for PPL touted the results as evidence of the company’s success and said it offered “data-driven” insights into the thinking of consumers and personal assistants. “The results indicate a successful transition process for the majority of consumers and PAs and will help us prioritize enhancements to tools and processes,” the spokesperson said. “With new participants registering daily, we look forward to continuing our support of the CDPAP community and strengthening our systems and processes to meet evolving needs.”

The new survey is a clear response to the vocal critics of PPL and the transition to a single fiscal intermediary. That transition was condensed into a chaotic three-month period that resulted in a lawsuit, a nebulous “grace period” enacted by the state Department of Health and ultimately a court-ordered deadline extension for consumers and aides to complete registering with PPL. For months, consumers, aides and even companies contracted with the state to help PPL have begged the state to delay the transition.

The Hochul administration has continued to defend the transition, and it suggested the new survey results offered vindication. “Despite all the false claims made over the past year by shady business groups and lobbyists, there are now hundreds of thousands of CDPAP consumers and workers participating in a new and improved system that will ensure the program remains sustainable for the long term,” Hochul spokesperson Sam Spokony said in a statement.

But home care advocates have continued to criticize PPL and the transition, pointing to accounts by workers of missed or incorrect paychecks and ongoing problems with switching from different fiscal intermediaries to PPL. At numerous rallies and protests, consumers, home care workers and advocates have charged that people will die from lack of access to services due to the ongoing problems. A recent rally in Albany calling for a legislative fix to the transition featured signs that read “Our Lives Are on the Line” and chants of “We’re all in hell with PPL!”

The advocacy group Caring Majority has performed multiple surveys of their own regarding the transition. One survey of 402 consumers and workers conducted in early May found that half of respondents said that they or their workers had not been fully paid during the first three pay periods. The survey also found that significant numbers of workers were cutting back on essential costs, while 20% of consumers who had lost staff reported negative health impacts. In the most recent survey, which was performed at the start of this month and included 214 staff and consumers, a third of workers said they experienced pay cuts and a majority of respondents said they had difficulty enrolling.

According to the latest numbers from PPL, the company has completed payroll for 214,000 personal assistants and has paid out over $1 billion in salaries. Estimates put the total number of personal assistants employed through CDPAP at about 425,000. A spokesperson for the state Department of Health, however, denied the accuracy of this number. “This number was inaccurate even before the CDPAP transition, and does not take into account the many workers who have switched to the Personal Care Services program as a part of the transition,” said Candace Acquaviva, the DOH spokesperson. “More than 95% of CDPAP consumers have received paid care through the 218,000 personal assistants that PPL has paid to date – this data makes it clear that the vast majority of workers currently active in the CDPAP program have been paid by PPL and were included in this survey pool.”

Ilana Berger, political director of Caring Majority Rising, called the PPL poll "fundamentally flawed and misleading” in a statement to City & State. In particular, she pointed to the pool of respondents, which did not include those who have been unable to successfully register with PPL, and the fact that the survey was only accessible to those with the technology needed to access it. “Rather than continuing to put out misleading spin, PPL should focus on fixing its broken enrollment process and providing for the hundreds of thousands of workers and consumers who are struggling to get the care and the paychecks they need to survive,” Berger said.