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Monday, July 19, 2021
THENEWBXCC - Bronx Business News You Can Use
425 Grand Concourse Will Debut As The Country’s Largest Passive House High-Rise, In Mott Haven, The Bronx
The Bronx will soon be home to the country’s largest Passive House high-rise development. Located at 425 Grand Concourse in Mott Haven, the 26-story building will create 277 units of affordable housing, a neighborhood supermarket, a community health center, a cultural center, and a 30,000-square-foot educational facility for CUNY’s Hostos Community College.
The 277 apartments at 425 Grand Concourse will be reserved for low- and moderate-income households and individuals. Residential amenity spaces will include an outdoor recreation deck on the 25th floor, two communal lounges, a fitness room, laundry rooms, bike storage, and a landscaped roof terrace on the third floor.
As a Passive House building, the structure incorporates a high-performance envelope that provides greater airtightness compared to typical building and construction standards. This results in a reduction of heat loss or temperature gain, improved temperature control, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. The building will also feature energy-efficient lighting systems, building mechanicals, and facilities. For tenants, this is expected to result in lower monthly utility bills.
Designed by Dattner Architects, the structure will eventually comprise 310,000 square feet. The building’s superstructure topped out early in January, and today, construction is 75 percent complete. The project is on track to debut in spring 2022.
“A large multi-family development such as 425 Grand Concourse is the ideal project for employing Passive House design, because the ratio between envelope size and enclosed building volume is very favorable,” said Christoph Stump, vice president of design and construction for Trinity Financial in New York, one of three developers responsible for the project. “Energy-recovery ventilation, heat-recovery heating and cooling, and the added work that goes into creating an airtight building with minimal thermal bridges adds relatively little cost to a project.”
The development team also includes MBD Community Housing Corporation and New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Monadnock Construction is the general contractor.
“Our rapid progress on 425 Grand Concourse is exciting to watch each day, and it is truly energizing the entire Mott Haven community in the Bronx,” said Thomas Brown, vice president of development for Trinity Financial, who oversees the company’s New York operations. “The residents who will occupy the 277 units of affordable housing will form the heart and soul of what we are creating.”
Comptroller Stringer Audit Finds the City Lost $179 Million Due to Mismanagement of DOE Medicaid Reimbursement Claims for Special Education Services
An audit of the New York City Department of Education found the agency did not adequately collect documentation to verify special education services claims for Medicaid reimbursement and does not perform routine collection for a variety of reimbursable services
DOE did not submit the necessary documentation for Medicaid reimbursement claims for the 2018-2019 School Year that totaled as much as $179,688,706 in costs for services for occupational, physical, and speech therapy
Comptroller Stringer recommended improvements to the DOE’s handling of claims including meeting all State and federal requirements and ensuring all documentation is collected appropriately for every eligible service
New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer released an audit of the New York City Department of Education’s (DOE) management of Medicaid reimbursement claims for special education services that provide students with special needs with occupational, physical, and speech therapy services. The audit found that the DOE’s failure to perform the due diligence necessary to meet State and federal requirements to receive Medicaid reimbursement for claims on services performed resulted in the agency losing an estimated $179 million in the 2018-2019 school year alone. The findings concluded that the DOE did not perform the necessary steps to receive reimbursement from the federal government for claims submitted to the DOE including obtaining written orders or referrals for services, verifying provider credentials, recording session notes, and obtaining parental consent to bill Medicaid. In response to this mismanagement, Comptroller Stringer recommended steps the DOE should undertake to ensure the agency receives all the federal Medicaid reimbursement funding that it is entitled to enshrined in the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA).
“New York City’s students with disabilities deserve the best quality education and every opportunity to succeed. Our audit found the DOE’s mismanagement of Medicaid claims for special education services resulted in the City losing out on hundreds of millions of dollars from a lack of accountability. This is money that could be in our classrooms supporting our children when they need it most,” said New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer. “This mismanagement is unacceptable, and the DOE must improve its process to capture every last dollar eligible for reimbursement. The stakes couldn’t be higher and our children deserve nothing less.”
The DOE is entitled to submit Medicaid reimbursement claims for covered services provided to Medicaid eligible students with disabilities who are between the ages of 3 and 21. The New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) and the New York State Department of Education (NYSED) jointly developed the Preschool/School Supportive Health Services Program (SSHSP) to help school districts obtain Medicaid reimbursement. The DOE Office of Medicaid Operations (OMO) is responsible for the coordination of programmatic and administrative efforts to maximize Medicaid reimbursement claims for related services including Physical Therapy (PT), Occupational Therapy (OT), and Speech Therapy. OMO is charged with ensuring that Medicaid reimbursement claims submitted by DOE meet federal and State requirements, and with finding efficiencies to increase claims.
Comptroller Stringer’s audit found the following lack of controls with regard to the DOE’s management of maximizing Medicaid reimbursement claims for special education services:
- DOE did not have adequate controls in place to ensure that student occupational therapy (OT), physical therapy (PT), and Speech Therapy service encounters met all of the federal and State Medicaid reimbursement documentation requirements including obtaining written orders or referrals for services, verifying provider credentials, recording session notes to document that diagnostic and/or treatment services were provided to students, and obtaining parental consent to bill Medicaid. As a result, DOE could not submit Medicaid reimbursement claims for those services.
- For the 2018-2019 School Year, DOE did not realize gross Medicaid reimbursements totaling as much as $179,688,706, for OT, PT, and speech therapy services.
- DOE does not submit any Medicaid reimbursement claims for the following covered services including valuations and reevaluations, Psychological Counseling, certain speech services, Special Transportation, and Skilled Nursing provided to public and non-public school students; and covered services provided to pre-school students who attend public schools and private schools other than NYSED-approved pre-school special education programs, and pre-school students who receive instruction at home.
- For the 2018-2019 School Year, DOE did not realize gross Medicaid reimbursements totaling as much as $9,966,540 for Psychological Counseling, certain Speech Therapy services, and covered services provided to pre-school public and non-public school students.
- DOE did not maintain evaluation and re-evaluation data, and did not provide the Comptroller’s audit team with students’ Individualized Education Program (IEP) data including service start and end dates, frequency, or duration of recommended services for Special Transportation and Skilled Nursing.
In response to these findings, Comptroller Stringer recommended the following:
- Perform a systematic analysis of those OT, PT, and Speech Therapy service encounters that do not pass the claim validation process to determine why those encounters did not meet Medicaid claiming requirements and to identify and prioritize corrective actions to maximize future Medicaid reimbursement revenues;
- Submit Medicaid reimbursement claims for Psychological Counseling service encounters which meet State and federal requirements;
- Ensure that evaluations are conducted and documented in a way that allows DOE to claim for covered services and submit Medicaid reimbursement claims for those services where appropriate;
- Reconsider the feasibility of submitting Medicaid reimbursement claims for Speech Therapy services provided under the supervision of a licensed provider and provided to students in all public and non-public schools, including but not limited to, running a pilot with adequate staffing levels and compliance with timely and complete session note;
- Ensure that contracted providers maintain electronic transportation logs which include Medicaid required elements for each trip and submit Medicaid reimbursement claims for Special Transportation services where appropriate;
- Immediately start claiming for Skilled Nursing services which meet federal and State requirements; and
- Take all necessary steps to ensure that Medicaid documentation claiming requirements are met for covered services provided to preschool-age students and submit Medicaid reimbursement claims for those services where appropriate.
To read Comptroller Stringer’s audit of the DOE’s Medicaid reimbursement program for special education services, click here.
Sunday, July 18, 2021
NYPD and FBI New York Fight Asian Hate with New Joint Public Awareness Campaign
The NYPD and our FBI New York partners announced a joint public service announcement (PSA) to encourage the reporting of anti-Asian hate crimes and to stand in solidarity with the Asian community. The NYPD and FBI encourage all New Yorkers, regardless of immigration status, to report any bias or hate crime incident – and it will be vigorously investigated.
The PSA's are spoken in English, Korean, Tagalog, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Vietnamese. They will be posted on the NYPD and FBI social media channels and disseminated across New York City communities. Leadership from the NYPD and FBI, as well as detectives and agents and former acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Joon Kim, participated in these videos to increase awareness of anti-Asian hate crimes and encourage New Yorkers from communities across the city to report any crime.
The NYPD and FBI need the help of all New Yorkers to bring justice to those that are victimized and so that the NYPD and FBI can hold perpetrators to account. Year-to-date as of July 11, 2021, as compared to last year, anti-Asian hate crimes have increased by 395% (104 v. 21).
"NYPD detectives work around the clock to prevent anti-Asian hate crimes from occurring, and vigorously investigate them if they do," said Police Commissioner Dermot Shea. "We need all New Yorkers to help to stop these hateful acts. We must continue to work together, with our federal partners and community members, to ensure safe communities for everyone. This public awareness campaign is another way we can reach New Yorkers and stop hate.”
“We each have a role to play to reverse the trends we’ve seen in New York City and beyond—let’s set the example,” said FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr. “Pay attention to what’s going on around you and do what’s right. You may be surprised how big of a role you can play in keeping our communities safe.”