The Office of the NYS Comptroller recently conducted an audit of providers that run Social Adult Day Services Programs (SADS) in New York State. This came about as a result of there being no universal licensing or registration requirement for SADS. The audit revealed that improvements should be made in regards to compliance and to internal documents, such as missing or outdated service plans and staff health records, as well as infrequent fire drills.
Providers of SADS that have funding contracted through the State Office for the Aging (OFA) and at the local level by 59 county Area Agencies on Aging (AAA) are overseen by these agencies. SADS programs are also overseen by the State’s Medicaid Management Long-Term Care model that is supervised by the State Department of Health. SADS that do not receive funding from these agencies are operating without regulations or licenses and therefore, the statistics on how these programs operate are not exactly known. Based on the auditors’ examination, at least 500 SADS programs were operating without regulations or licenses. The Office of the NYS Comptroller issued recommendations for SADS providers to update program regulations that would be helpful in evaluating program quality and performance in today’s environment, improve existing oversight and monitoring, as well as develop procedures to verify the accuracy of the annual self-assessment certifications.
Although some SADS providers in NYS are overseen by their funding agencies, SADS providers that are not should be taking a proactive approach to reviewing their current operations to ensure compliance. We’ve seen in other funding areas (NYSED, for example) that initial studies like this often times lead to painful future audits by the State Comptroller. If you’re an unregulated SADS provider, now is the time to act to reduce your risk exposure.
Tania Quigley, CPA
Partner
Tania Quigley has been a member of Cerini & Associates’ audit and consulting practice area since 2005 where she focuses on serving the firms nonprofit and employee benefit plan clientele. Tania has experience in performing financial statement audits and reviews, tax return preparation, cost report preparation and filing, retirement plan audits, and other consulting. Tania brings her expertise, diversified background, and helpful approach to all of her engagements.