The Adams administration has launched a competitive search for new vendors to care for asylum seekers now that the city is scaling back its no-bid, emergency contracts with the troubled health care company DocGo.
The city released a request for proposal Tuesday calling for bids from organizations to provide shelter and supportive services to migrants. The new procurement approach comes after the Adams administration has taken heat for its reliance on costly non-competitive emergency contracts to address the city’s migrant crisis; DocGo, as a result, procured a $432 million contract, with initially limited oversight, under which it grew to serve some 3,600 migrants.
Officials in the Adams administration did not explicitly mention DocGo in its announcement and cast the call out to companies as a way to cut costs while expanding the city’s pool of vendors.
“This RFP will allow us to take a wider look at providers in this space and continue to evaluate how we are allocating resources to find additional cost savings and process improvements,” said Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom in a statement.
DocGo spokeswoman Andrea Hagelganssa said executives at the company “welcome a competitive bidding process” and “will review the RFP and determine whether to re-bid.” Indeed, DocGo’s CEO Lee Beinstock said at the company’s annual shareholders meeting Tuesday that the firm expects its growth will be “largely driven by our pipeline of municipal RFPs for larger, more sustainable behavioral health and population health programs.”
In April, City Hall declared that it would not renew the healthcare company’s $432 million contract to provide services to migrants when it expired in May. Instead, city officials said they’d use an existing contract with Garner Environmental Services to care for some migrants for at least three months while officials identify vendors to take over the work.
Prospective contractors would provide services — meals, laundry, clinical care and more — at current and possibly new migrant centers throughout the city. The initial contract term is for 12 months, but could be extended.
As part of the contract vendors would also be on the hook to develop and maintain a database that provides the city with real-time program statistics, including the daily number of active guests, number of occupied and vacant rooms, meals served, case management sessions, and other onsite services, in addition to “regular reporting on program activities, outcomes, and challenges,” according to the RFP.
The request for proposal has no deadline; bids will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
“Successful bidders must be capable of navigating complex situations with cultural competency and compassion,” the RFP states.
The city, meanwhile, hasn’t completely cut ties with DocGo. The company is still providing care to migrants in the city and upstate while the Adams administration works to transition away from its services.
That includes services as part of a separate, nearly $41 million no-bid contract with the city to run a major center for asylum seekers in Long Island City, Queens. DocGo has quietly operated the 2,400-bed site for the city since September; the contract was finalized this month. City Hall says it will rebid the center’s operations once DocGo’s contract expires in September.
Under the contract city taxpayers are on the hook for some eye popping salaries for DocGo staff. That includes $1,140 each day for a social worker, $1,040 per day for six individual supervisors and $1,000 a day for a program director; DocGo also bills the city $400 a day for its lowest paid staffers, roughly 40 administrative workers, in what works out to $50 an hour, according to newly public city contract records.
Despite the rocky year, Beinstock described 2023 as “a standout year for DocGo” and touted the company’s 2024 first quarter revenue of $192.1 million at the annual shareholders meeting.
But DocGo’s stock has suffered through a spate of migrant services controversies and it’s currently just above $3 a share — down from $8.90 a year ago and from a high of $10.82 per share in October 2022. Still, some leadership at the company has managed to hold on, even as investors have filed a class-action lawsuit against the firm, seeking to recoup losses they say they suffered after the company’s stock fell in the wake of sour news coverage.
Proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services urged investors at the annual meeting to withhold votes to reelect the board’s chairman, Steven Katz, and to vote against Beinstock’s pay (his total compensation was $11.54 million in 2023), but shareholders did not buck the company’s management and voted in favor of both measures, according to preliminary results.
Beinstock sought to spin the Adams administration’s decision to wind down its relationship with DocGo as a strategic move.
“We are currently working with our partners at New York City to transition certain migrant services projects,” Beinstock told shareholders, “which will enable us to focus our energy, resources and passion to drive continued growth in our base medical transportation and non-migrant mobile health business lines.”
Caroline Spivack , 2024-06-18 20:41:37
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