Comptroller audit finds fault with New York’s pre-pandemic guidance to group homes for people with disabilities

ALBANY — The state agency overseeing group homes caring for people with disabilities failed to provide facilities with proper guidance as the COVID pandemic first raged across New York, according to a new audit from Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

The report, released on Thursday, outlines how the Office of People With Developmental Disabilities failed to provide consistent guidance to 6,929 group homes, mostly operated by nonprofits, across the state during the first wave of the deadly pandemic.

While OPWDD’s emergency management and emergency planning documents considered pandemics as a risk even before the COVID-19 crisis, the agency did not take steps to ensure all group homes followed suit, DiNapoli said.

The audit found that while many group homes had their own emergency response plans, they did not account for pandemics or emerging infectious diseases, while others referred staff to follow OPWDD’s guidance.

Auditors with the comptroller’s office found the lack of effective emergency response plans at the onset of the pandemic led to “difficulties in securing personal protective equipment, dealing with staff shortages and confusion and delays over how to isolate or quarantine individuals during the worst waves of COVID-19.”

“Group homes are supposed to offer people with developmental disabilities safe places to live as independently as possible,” DiNapoli said. “Our audit found the Office for People With Developmental Disabilities did not issue timely, consistent guidance to the vast majority of their certified group homes.

“Inconsistent emergency management coordination and oversight put residents, families and staff in harm’s way,” he added.

The audit did not establish a causal relationship between the agency’s actions and COVID cases.

OPWDD reported 657 people living in state-regulated group homes died from COVID, and more than 13,000 contracted the virus in its residential programs between March 2020 and April 2022.

DiNapoli’s office recommended several changes to help OPWDD prepare providers for another potentially deadly pandemic, including reviewing and updating the agency’s Emergency Management Operations Protocol and supplemental documents to “ensure all group homes implement current policies and procedures in the event of another public health emergency.”

The comptroller also encouraged the agency to develop procedures to ensure that group homes’ emergency plans encompass planning for and responding to public health emergencies.

In response to the audit, OPWDD defended its protocols, as well as its overall response to the COVID crisis, and said the comptroller’s office relied on incomplete data.

“Prior to the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, OPWDD had existing policies covering all its facilities, addressing foreseeable pandemic-related concerns such as infection control procedures and training,” the agency responded to the part of the audit’s claims.

The agency also argued that it acted swiftly once the pandemic hit to address PPE shortages and set visitation restrictions as well as implementing a contact tracing program to keep residents safe.

“OPWDD frequently updated these policies and added new policies based upon evolving guidance from federal and state public health experts, at times updates occurring daily as the entire world learned how to respond to the novel coronavirus,” the agency added.

Dinapoli’s latest COVID-related report comes on the heels of an announcement last month that his office will be conducting a followup review of the state Department of Health’s handling of nursing homes during the pandemic.

An initial review by the comptroller’s office found officials undercounted the number of nursing home residents who died in the initial months of the pandemic.

The initial 2022 report found the state undercounted COVID deaths in elder care facilities by at least 4,100 as the pandemic ripped across the Empire State, echoing similar findings reported by Attorney General Letitia James’ office a year earlier.

New York significantly trailed other states in surveying nursing homes and developing strategies to stop infections from spreading in facilities, DiNapoli said.