It isn’t unusual for home-care patients to be uncomfortable letting a stranger into their home to service their medical and personal needs. It’s often a cause for anxiety for patients.
But there’s a program that offers an alternative: the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP), a statewide Medicaid program that has helped thousands of patients over the last decade to choose a caregiver they know and trust — either a child, sibling or some other family member. (There are a few disallowed family members, but most are allowed.)
For clients contacting Edison Home Health Care, the process typically works like this: a patient, not satisfied with their current home care situation, calls a CDPAP coordinator at Edison Home Health Care, a New York State certified Fiscal Intermediary (FI) for CDPAP. Edison’s staff helps coordinate the necessary nurse assessments who make home visits to see if the patient qualifies for the program. Assessments are conducted by a New York State vendor — Maximus — and the patient’s Medicaid plan of choice. For clients already enrolled in a Medicaid plan, a Maximus assessment is usually not necessary.
To qualify, the patient must require assistance with activities of daily living or skilled care and be self-directing. The program is for long-term care — meaning the patient is expected to need care for at least 120 days.
Next, the coordinator works on qualifying the caregiver the patient wishes to hire — no formal training or license is required, a feature unique to CDPAP. Rather, the patient trains their own caregiver.
Once the patient is qualified and enrolled, the patient then “hires” the caregiver.
For patients who need the home care but don’t want to let a stranger into their house, visit the CDPAP Department of Edison HHC dedicated CDPAP website.
