Exclusive | Hochul admin caves on rollout of pro-union NY home care overhaul as whistleblower describes chaos: St show

The Hochul administration softened its deadline for a pro-union overhaul of the state’s $9 billion home care system -– after a rollout so chaotic one insider called it “a s–t show.”  Gov.Kathy Hochul is set to release a plan with only days until an April 1 deadline for more than 280,000 home care recipients to transition to a handpicked firm for payment processing, The Post has learned.The Department of Health said it would announce “a plan to protect consumers and workers who require some additional time to transition” although it said it was still holding to the deadline for the consumer directed personal assistance program, or CDPAP.Hochul handpicked Public Partnerships LLC as a new middleman to consolidate payroll services from hundreds of firms, a move supported by an influential health care union that could gain thousands of new members through unionizing aides under the program.But a whistleblower said PPL has been inundated with phone calls and struggling to meet the demand to try to hit the deadline.

“It’s unimaginable.We’ve gone from the frying pan to the fire,” the PPL employee said.Hundreds of callers are on hold by 8 a.m.

when workers sign on for the day, and hundreds are still waiting on hold by the end of the business day, the worker said — meaning consumers and caregivers have to call back and try again the next day.“Thousands of calls a day are getting abandoned,” the source said, claiming that management is ramping up pressure and “micromanaging” agents’ time.The company’s workforce, which is working remotely and has recently been bolstered with agents from outside New York in the last few weeks despite PPL saying its employees would be based locally.Critics of the transition recently protested outside a vacant office space belonging to the company near Albany.“If we had another year or two, it might work.

But as it stands, it’s a s–t show.It’s a s–t show,” the whistleblower noted.The Hochul adm...