Some of Philly’s most vulnerable residents say they lost medical care without notice after millions of Pa. state agency letters went unsent
The Department of Human Services says it will extend deadlines, notify affected residents, and reopen impacted cases, as some Community Legal Services clients say they've lost access to critical care.
“Do you realize you are going to end my life by doing this?”
Eliana Chernyakhovsky said she asked the question through an interpreter over and over again to the state Department of Human Services last week, after her 24-hour, state-funded care was cut off without warning. Her meal provider was also cut off. How would she feed herself? What if her oxygen tank ran out?
“Fear had risen in my heart,” Chernyakhovsky said in Russian during an interview through an interpreter on Wednesday. “I was genuinely afraid.”
Chernyakhovsky, 73, of Northeast Philadelphia, was born with spina bifida and has a number of physical disabilities associated with the condition, and uses a wheelchair to get around. She is among the Pennsylvania residents who say they have lost their government-funded services due to a state-contracted mail vendor failing to deliver a month’s worth of agency mail.
That breakdown resulted in 3.4 million letters never getting sent, 1.7 million of which were from the state Department of Human Services — the agency that oversees SNAP food assistance and Medicaid and is tasked with serving Pennsylvania’s most vulnerable populations.
Millions of letters from state agencies — including notices of health and SNAP benefit renewal, driver’s license and vehicle registration renewal invitations, vehicle registration cards, and more — were never sent by a mail presort vendor, who was contracted by the state to tray and sort agency mail in order to save money on postage. The failure went undetected by the state for a month, until early December, when Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration fired Harrisburg-based Capitol Presort Services and hired another vendor for a $1 million emergency contract to work through the backlog.
In Chernyakhovsky’s case, a letter dated Nov. 6 said she had failed to submit a renewal packet to continue receiving in-home care, said her attorney, Louise Hayes of Community Legal Services. Chernyakhovsky had 15 days to appeal to continue receiving services, or else her services would be shut off on Nov. 21.
But due to the monthlong lapse in state agency mail, Chernyakhovsky didn’t receive the letter until last week, after funding for her in-home nurses and food services had already been cut off, she said.
Chernyakhovsky’s home health aides opted to continue her care without pay and with no assurance they would get paid for the time when her care was restored, due to the level of her needs.
Her services restarted last week due to efforts by Community Legal Services while her appeal works its way through the system. As of this week, one of her home health aide agencies has still not received payment from her insurance company.
Alexander Aybinder, her day-shift nurse, said Wednesday it was still unclear when he would get paid. But he said he would still come to Chernyakhovsky’s home, no matter what.
“I will come tomorrow, because she cannot stay without service. I will work,” he said. “She’s absolutely helpless.”
DHS: Extended deadlines and ‘additional flexibility’
DHS spokesperson Brandon Cwalina said in a statement Thursday the agency will extend deadlines for appeals and provide “additional flexibility for affected Pennsylvanians.” Residents affected by the mail issue will receive notice of their appeal options and deadline extensions, Cwalina said.
Medicaid, CHIP and TANF cash assistance recipients whose benefits were reduced or cut off during the mail delay will have their cases reopened, he added. These cases will be again reviewed to determine if they received the necessary notification of a change in benefits. Renewals for the programs, originally due in December, are now due in January.
DHS cannot extend renewal deadlines for SNAP benefits due to federal guidelines, but impacted SNAP recipients who submit the necessary documentation within 30 days of losing their benefits will be able to have them reopened and backdated, Cwalina said.
At least two dozen impacted so far, with more expected
At least two dozen Community Legal Services clients have had problems with receiving their benefits due to the mail delay issue, said Maripat Pileggi, a supervising attorney at CLS. The mail delay affected state agency letters dated Nov. 3 through Dec. 3, officials have said, and all unsent mail should be received by residents in a few days.
And as the nonprofit legal agency has tried to help restore critical services to some of its most vulnerable clients, CLS attorney Lydia Gottesfeld said legal advocates have struggled to reach the departments in DHS that could help them, with phone lines going unanswered or hour-long wait times.
“It’s been very difficult to get information about these delays,” she added.
Cwalina said on Thursday that any DHS appeal hearings that were missed due to the mail disruption are being reopened and rescheduled, and the agency maintains that its callback system is accessible to recipients.
Cases like Chernyakhovsky’s are among the first and most urgent that CLS has identified this month, since the state said that a month’s worth of agency mail to residents from DHS and Pennsylvania Department of Transportation was never sent. Residents like Chernyakhovsky who receive care through the Medicaid-funded home and community-based services program often have the most acute health issues and significant needs, meaning a loss in healthcare services can be catastrophic.
Gottesfeld expects that more residents will realize in the coming weeks that they lost services — such as food assistance or health insurance — due to missed hearings or deadlines the next time they visit the doctor or grocery store.
When people lose state-funded services, it is not usually because they suddenly no longer need them, Gottesfeld said. Rather, it’s usually due to failing to submit paperwork properly, resulting in a loss of food assistance, healthcare, or other services.
Questions remain
It remains unclear how the state agency mail piled up for more than a month before officials noticed, how the backlog was discovered, or where the millions of agency letters were located after the vendor stopped sorting them.
The reported loss of benefits due to the mail delay also comes after several tumultuous months for people who receive public benefits, following a federal government shutdown that cut food assistance, new work requirements to maintain benefits, and future uncertainty under federal cuts passed earlier this year. Shapiro was at the forefront of Democratic opposition to federal cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, and was a vocal critic when the department withheld benefits during the federal shutdown.
On Thursday, a group of 15 state Senate Republicans, including top legislative leaders, sent a letter to the Department of General Services citing The Inquirer’s reporting and requesting more information about how the mail delivery failure was discovered, why it took a month to find the backlog, and more.
“Given the broad scope of this mail delivery failure, it is critical to ensure every effort is made to minimize the impact on our constituents and the disruption it may cause in their lives,” the senators wrote.
Shapiro’s administration is “exploring all legal options” against the fired vendor, Capitol Presort Services, Cwalina said.