QUESTION
Why has there been a decline in home delivered meals and clients served in early 2024?
0:26:42
·
3 min
The decrease in home delivered meals and clients served by the NYC Department for the Aging in early 2024 is due to changes in Medicaid funding and administrative delays in invoicing.
- The state's directive leads to over 2,000 Medicaid-funded clients becoming ineligible for supplemental home delivered meals.
- An administrative delay contributes to inaccuracies in meal and service delivery tracking.
- The STAR system, transitioning to VIVE, is used to compare service data with invoicing to ensure accuracy.
- Despite these issues, the overall meal delivery trends are aligning with pre-pandemic levels, indicating a potentially temporary decline.
Adrienne Adams
0:26:42
The recently Release PMMR shows NYC Aging's HDMI providers delivered 1,300,000 meals to 20,000 775 homebound older adults during the 1st 4 months of fiscal year 2024.
0:26:59
This is just over a 2% decrease in the number of meals delivered and a 9% decrease in clients served when compared to the same period.
0:27:10
In fiscal year 2023.
0:27:12
What were the factors that led to this decline in the beginning of 2024?
Lorraine Cortes-Vasquez
0:27:18
Thank you for the question because it is it is a question that we've been grappling with also.
0:27:23
I believe that some of that is attributable to our that we're unable now to absorb the clients that we had for the last 12 years, which were those Medicaid funded clients.
0:27:38
If you Medicaid funded clients only can get medically required meals.
0:27:44
Through their Medicaid program.
0:27:46
And home delivered meals was a way of supplementing that.
0:27:50
The state made us stop that.
0:27:53
And as I said, 7000 had to be grandfathered in.
0:27:57
So there's 2 thou over 2000 of them now, almost 2100.
0:28:01
Right now, who have been deemed ineligible while we're waiting for this guidance.
0:28:06
So that is a contributing factor to that, right?
0:28:09
So that number disparity.
0:28:13
The other is there anything else to Jose that we wanna add to that?
Jose Mercado
0:28:18
There's also a lag in invoicing as well by 1 9th.
Lorraine Cortes-Vasquez
0:28:21
So the way we look at services is that clients providers put in the data in the in the STAR system soon to be called VIVE.
0:28:32
Mhmm.
0:28:32
And then we compare that to invoices to make sure that there is parody, and and we can compare them.
0:28:40
If they're not, then we have to go with the invoicing number.
0:28:43
If the invoice is late, then we don't have exactly what their latest numbers are.
Adrienne Adams
0:28:46
I see.
0:28:47
Okay.
0:28:48
Would you also attribute that to the the recent years, the trending, we were NYC aging was at over 4,500,000 in fiscal 2019 2020, but the number of meals provided has declined in recent years to between $44,300,000.
0:29:11
With that also, what what you just stated, would that also be the factor of the the number of meals trending downward in recent years?
0:29:21
Is it all the same thing?
Jose Mercado
0:29:22
So I would say, for example, we've been looking at this data and we've been seeing, for example, HTML may use continuing to go up.
0:29:28
If we compare 2019 to come coming 2023 to 2023 overall, we're a big basically close to where we ended up in 2019.
0:29:38
So our date actually, if you look at 2019, which was $6,500,000, 6 point 5 1,000,000 miles compared to where we're at right now.
0:29:45
It's about trending to where we actually were in 2019.
0:29:48
Mhmm.
Lorraine Cortes-Vasquez
0:29:49
So It was 6.1 right now.
Jose Mercado
0:29:52
Okay.
0:29:52
We're gonna trend right back close to that number.
0:29:55
Pre pandemic.
0:29:55
So Alright.
0:29:57
And to the and to the commissioner mentioned all our as well, our data is missing all the MLTC clients.
Lorraine Cortes-Vasquez
0:30:02
All the LMSFC clients is also missing.
Jose Mercado
0:30:04
In 2019, that information included MLTC clients.
Lorraine Cortes-Vasquez
0:30:07
So The 6.5 included the 7 those that I spoke about.