Several state lawmakers said Tuesday they want to pass separate legislation after the budget is finished to fix ongoing issues with a $9 billion Medicaid home care program transition as workers complain about inaccurate paychecks.

The state continues to transition thousands of disabled and elderly people who use the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program for home care to company Public Partnerships LLC. 

Lawmakers said they are exploring other legislative solutions for later this spring to ensure the transition from over 600 fiscal intermediaries to one works for people who rely on the program.

"Right now, this is not working," state Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon, a Brooklyn Democrat, told reporters Tuesday of the transition.

Many personal care assistants say they're aren't getting paid on time, or are paid incorrectly for hours worked since the company took over April 1. Some program recipients have said it's forced them to live with less of the care they need.

"Out of 10 people that work with the person I take care of, I'm the only one who's been fully paid," said Lolli Edinger, a home care worker who assists a CDPAP user who needs 24-hour care.

Edinger said she and other workers have had a multitude of issues with PPL's time card system to log overnight shifts.

“The payroll definitely was not set up for the way CDPAP works — especially those who have 24/7 care or for those who have in-home, live-in coverage," she said. "We have found people who work over midnight aren’t getting paid for the first half of their shift.”

Edinger said PPL updated its mobile app this week to fix the problem, but CDPAP users and workers continue to hit roadblocks contacting the company for support by phone or email, which has made it difficult to continue their care.

A handful of lawmakers rallied in the Capitol with CDPAP recipients and their personal care assistants who say they have skipped utility or other bills amid the pay delays.

Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal said there's appetite in the Legislature to draft new legislation, or tweak existing proposals, to allow fiscal intermediaries working as subsidiaries to PPL to continue working after the transition is done, or create a state license to improve oversight.

"If anyone thought that the people who are involved with CDPAP were going to go away, obviously that's not the case," Rosenthal said. "We're not going to abandon them. We're going to keep fighting. We didn't vote for a plan like this. This is not what anyone expected...So we have to fix it."

Simon and Rosenthal said they expect lawmakers to discuss the issue more seriously in conference next month.

Earlier this month, a federal judge forced the state to give CDPAP users and workers more time to complete registration.

"As a person who lives with a disability, the whole thing is very frustrating that decisions are made about us, for us, without our voices being included," said CDPAP recipient Sage Jobsis, who has cerebral palsy.

Gov. Kathy Hochul continues to defend the transition. She argued the program was $1.9 billion in 2015 — growing over 1,000 percent in the last decade — and had to be changed to one statewide fiscal intermediary to cut down on waste, fraud and abuse.

And New Yorkers who use CDPAP for home care and their personal assistants have a few more weeks to register with the new company.

"We talk about ferreting out waste, fraud and abuse out of Washington," Hochul told reporters Monday at an unrelated event in Rochester. "I've been doing that here because these are precious Medicaid dollars that we are at risk of losing more of them from the federal government."

Hochul said she directed the Health Department to solve ongoing transition problems, but has provided little to no details about how.

“The Department continues to closely monitor this transition as part of its ongoing commitment to protecting access to care and supporting caregivers," a spokesperson with the Health Department said in a statement Tuesday.

The governor compared recent "hiccups" to issues with the roll out of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 when she served in Congress.

"We are focused on making sure this is as smooth as possible," she said. "There are challenges, of course, but we are determined to get to the bottom of each and every one of them."

PPL has issued payments to more than 130,000 CDPAP caregivers in the state in the second week of payroll, and expects this week's payroll to include about 155,000 workers, according to the company Tuesday.

A spokesperson with PPL said any workers who failed to receive their pay on time, or the correct amount for the week, failed to submit their timecards to PPL or submitted them incorrectly. 

"There is no backlog," PPL said in a statement Tuesday. "All registered caregivers who submitted a compliant timecard by the payroll deadline of Saturday 11:59 pm were paid last week, same for this week. Many of the caregivers who have claimed to have not been paid or paid incorrectly have received education on the payroll schedule and timesheet requirements.  

"There are also PAs who did not submit service time, but are getting paid training time only because they took a training and will automatically be paid," according to the company. "...We also have been processing payroll daily since the first payroll date on April 10 to ensure all PAs who have recently completed their registration or submitted compliant timecards are paid promptly."

But several lawmakers say they're ready to go back to the drawing board and fix issues with the CDPAP changes — even though they voted for the short transition timeline in last year's budget.

"We didn't vote for chaos," Simon said. "We didn't vote for people not being paid. We didn't vote for people being worried about whether or not they're going to get care."

About 200,000 consumers have fully registered with PPL, according to the company, and 180,000 workers of about 255,000 have finished registration to date, per state officials.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been corrected to reflect proper registration numbers with PPL.