Opinion
Decided March 31, 2005.
APPEAL, by permission of the Court of Appeals, from an order of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in the Second Judicial Department, entered February 2, 2004. The Appellate Division order, insofar as appealed from, (1) granted respondent Health Commissioner leave to appeal, and (2) modified an order of the Supreme Court, Suffolk County (Richard M. Klein, J.), entered in a proceeding pursuant to CPLR article 78, which had granted the petition to the extent that it annulled and vacated a determination reducing petitioner's Medicaid reimbursements, enjoined respondents from seeking to enforce the reduced rates and directed respondents to recalculate rates consistent with the order. The modification consisted of deleting the provision which determined that the actual improvement standard used to determine if a patient was properly categorized as receiving restorative therapy was arbitrary and capricious and deleting the provision which determined that the reclassification of the two patients receiving only an exercise regime was arbitrary and capricious and directed the respondents to recalculate rates consistent with the determination of Supreme Court, and substituting therefor a provision dismissing the proceeding as to those two patients. The Appellate Division affirmed the judgment as modified.
Matter of Maggio v. DeBuono, 4 AD3d 362, reversed.
Eliot Spitzer, Attorney General, New York City ( Carol Fischer of counsel), for appellants. Hamburger, Maxson, Yaffe, Wishod Knauer, LLP, Melville ( David N. Yaffe of counsel), for respondent.
Before: Chief Judge KAYE and Judges G.B. SMITH, CIPARICK, ROSENBLATT, GRAFFEO, READ and R.S. SMITH concur in memorandum.
OPINION OF THE COURT
MEMORANDUM.
The order of the Appellate Division, insofar as appealed from, should be reversed, with costs, and the petition dismissed in its entirety.
The Department of Health's reclassification of certain "restorative therapy" patients at a residential health care facility who showed no actual improvement as "maintenance therapy" patients was neither arbitrary nor capricious ( see Matter of Elcor Health Servs. v. Novello, 100 NY2d 273).
On review of submissions pursuant to section 500.4 of the Rules of the Court of Appeals ( 22 NYCRR 500.4), order, insofar as appealed from, reversed, etc.