NYS: Millions for expanded in-home services to cut waitlist for LI seniors needing care, including meals, transportation

A months or yearslong wait for hundreds of Long Island seniors seeking home and community-based services, including bathing, medical transportation and meal deliveries, could finally be coming to an end.

The state budget for the 2025-26 fiscal year, signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul last week, included $68 million to close the waitlist in the state's Expanded In-Home Services for the Elderly Program, or EISEP — a $45 million increase from the $33 million appropriated for the program one year earlier, said Greg Olsen, who heads the New York State Office for the Aging.

In total, $8.3 million in funding for the program — a critical component in allowing seniors to continue living in their homes and avoiding relocating to long-term care facilities — will be directed toward eliminating the waitlist of nearly 900 requests for services on Long Island, Olsen said.

In an interview Thursday, Olsen said the funding increase should be enough to close the waitlist statewide as long as staffing is available to perform the work.

"There is enough money," he said. "The question is the workforce. Do you have the personal care aides? ... For those types of services, it's really dependent upon the workforce."

The funding increase comes amid years of lobbying in Albany by advocacy groups such as AARP New York, and following multiple stories from outlets, including Newsday, detailing how the waitlist was forcing some families to consider placing their loved ones in nursing homes or assisted living facilities.

Living with 'dignity'

In a statement, AARP New York State Director Beth Finkel said the funding increase "will go a long way toward eliminating the statewide waiting lists for essential care services that allow older New Yorkers to live safely and with dignity in their own homes."

The state previously indicated that closing the waitlist would require about $35.6 million in additional funding.

"Years of underfunding resulted in long county-level waiting lists for services such as home-delivered meals, personal care and transportation to medical appointments, putting the health and welfare of thousands of aging New Yorkers at risk," Finkel said.

The state funds EISEP, which assists 10,585 seniors across New York, while county officials administer the program for people 60 and older who earn above the Medicaid level but can't afford to pay for private home and community-based services.

Statewide, the backlog of EISEP requests grew about 2%, from 16,041 in September 2023 to 16,396 requests this past September, according to data collected by the Association on Aging in New York, an Albany-based nonprofit that connects county agencies with service providers for the program.

The total number of seniors on the waitlist doesn't match the number of requests because some older New Yorkers are waiting for multiple services, according to advocates involved with the program.

As of September, there were 890 unmet EISEP requests for services on Long Island, down 42% from one year earlier, state data shows. They include 643 requests in Suffolk and 247 in Nassau.

For example, there are 292 requests in Suffolk for case management services — assistance in navigating the labyrinth of state systems and programs — while the figure is 150 in Nassau, according to figures compiled by the state.

In addition, Suffolk has 139 requests for home delivered meals, 136 for personal care services, such as housekeeping, bathing and toileting and 76 for caregiver services, state data shows.

In Nassau, there are 40 unmet requests for transportation assistance, 38 for personal care services and 19 for help with household chores, according to the data.

Representatives for the county Offices for the Aging in Suffolk and Nassau didn't respond to requests for comment.

Keeping seniors at home

The EISEP funding increase, Olsen said, will help families avoid paying for private in-home care services or placing their loved ones in more expensive nursing homes — which cost an average of $100,000 annually.

An analysis of 2,200 clients in the program showed 10% of those on the waitlist eventually moved to a nursing home and 7% applied for either Managed Long Term Care or community Medicaid, both significantly more expensive programs funded by taxpayers, according to the 2023 state report.

Comparatively, the cost to serve a high-risk EISEP client with four or more chronic conditions and who needs assistance with daily activities, is less than $10,000 annually, according to the Office for the Aging.

"We only have a little over 100,000 licensed nursing home beds [statewide], and we have 4.84 million people over the age of 60," Olsen said. "So the math doesn't work ... The type of client that we're serving is already nursing home eligible and they're already Medicaid eligible. But we keep them off Medicaid; out of nursing homes and out of [Emergency Department] hospitalizations by providing a comprehensive array of community services."

Closing the waitlist also would save taxpayers an estimated $237 million in annual Medicaid costs, AARP officials said during a State Assembly hearing last year.

In addition to a lack of funding, experts said the backlog has been a product of the region's rapidly aging senior population, a shortage of home care workers, inflationary cost increases for meals and home delivery services and a mandated wage increase for home care workers that was funded for Medicaid providers but not the local aging services network.

"We hope the governor and legislature continue to be mindful of this problem and keep the resources flowing from the state to the counties to keep these waiting lists down or eliminate them in the future," said Bill Ferris, a lobbyist for AARP New York.

Becky Preve, executive director of the Association on Aging in New York, added that it's critical, with an aging population statewide and a declining number of available nursing home beds, to maintain funding levels, even if the waitlist is eliminated.

"Our average client is served for seven years," Preve said. "So this funding needs to continue in order to be able to supply those services. Because if that funding is lost, we're withdrawing services from people that have become dependent upon them."

By Robert Brodsky

robert.brodsky@newsday.com@BrodskyRobert

Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.