In a press conference today, Governor Cuomo announced that the federal government has denied New York’s request to continue the multi-billion-dollar Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment (DSRIP) program.
This means the state will be unable to use $625 million in unspent funds for the current $7.4 billion DSRIP waiver, as sought in a request to extend the program through March 2021. Also denied is a second phase of DSRIP, which would have provided $8 billion in federal reinvestment funds also sought by the Cuomo Administration through 2024.
In today’s press conference, the Governor named the DSRIP funding decision among others involving political and policy differences between the state and the federal government. A clip of the press conference is available here.
Under DSRIP, the state approved 25 performing provider systems, primarily led by hospitals, who submitted project plans aimed at lowering avoidable hospital use by 25 percent in exchange for billions of dollars in funding over five years.
HCA has long urged a more direct role for home and community-care providers in the DSRIP structure. While community-based programs have been involved in some important DSRIP projects, we’ve called for increased financial support and priority program roles for home care’s participation under DSRIP’s next phases as it pertained to fund flows and administrative decision-making.
At a time when the Medicaid Redesign Team (MRT) is tasked with devising $2.5 billion in cost savings to overcome a Medicaid budget gap in time for the April 1 state budget deadline, it is unclear by what margin or degree this announcement complicates an already precarious state budget outlook, especially for Medicaid. HCA will provide further information on this development and its ramifications as more details are made available.