STATEMENT BY ATTORNEY GENERAL CUOMO ON THE LEGISLATURE’S PASSAGE OF THE NEW YORK CERTIFIED AIDE REGISTRY AND EMPLOYMENT SEARCH ACT
 
“I applaud the Legislature for taking swift action to pass the New York Certified Aide Registry and Employment Search Act. This critically important measure is a tremendous step for protecting New York’s most vulnerable population and state taxpayers. The creation of the first publicly accessible database of home health and personal care aides offers greater transparency and new measures of accountability that will improve oversight and help end the fraud my office has uncovered in this rapidly growing industry. I look forward to Governor David Paterson signing this bill into law.”
 
The New York Certified Aide Registry and Employment Search Act was introduced earlier this month by the respective legislative health committee chairs, Sen. Kemp Hannon in the Senate and Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried in the Assembly, at the request of the Attorney General.  It establishes an Internet-based registry of home health and personal care aides that includes health care employment history, results of criminal background checks for aides employed through agencies, and certifications – signed under penalty of perjury – from school officials confirming that the aides completed the required training.
 
Attorney General Cuomo’s ongoing investigation into the home health care industry, known as “Operation Home Alone,” has uncovered thousands of fraudulent home health aide certifications and led to the convictions of dozens of uncertified aides, registered nurses, managers of schools that provided false certifications, agencies that employed aides and nurses and Medicaid recipients complicit in no-show billing schemes. In many of those cases, the aides and nurses were found to have been billing for services they did not provide, providing and billing for services despite lack of proper training and certification, and billing through more than one agency at a time in order to be paid for as much as 36 hours in one day.
 
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