A politically active medical group in the Bronx garnered an unusual benefit in the new state budget – access to bailout money otherwise reserved for safety-net hospitals and nursing homes, reports Empire Center.
A provision of the newly enacted state budget tweaked the rules of Vital Access Provider Assurance Program, a $1.4 billion pool of Medicaid funds set aside to rescue health-care institutions in “severe financial distress.”
In notably specific terms, Part E of the Health and Mental Hygiene bill made money from the pool available to “an entity that was formed as a preferred provider system pursuant to the delivery system reform incentive payment (DSRIP) program and collaborated with an independent practice association that received VBP innovator status from the department for purposes of meeting DSRIP goals, and which preferred provider system remains operational as an integrated care system.”
One entity that matches all of those criteria is Somos Community Care, a Bronx-based not-for-profit organization with political ties to Hochul and other high-ranking Democratic officials.
Somos, a network of 2,600 physicians and other medical professionals, was founded in 2015 to participate in the Cuomo administration’s Delivery System Reform Incentive Program, or DSRIP, an attempt to overhaul Medicaid that was financed by a five-year federal grant of $6.4 billion. Read more.
