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It’s no small irony that just a couple of weeks after Gov. Kathy Hochul released a final report on New York’s “Master Plan for Aging,” the state comptroller released a scathing audit on the state’s monitoring of adult care facilities.

If anything needs a master plan, it seems to be a state Health Department that too often has been found to be deficient when it comes to safeguarding the health of New Yorkers, aged and not-so-aged.

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The latest critique of the agency came Wednesday from Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, whose office found that the Health Department was not adequately overseeing the more than 500 adult care facilities around the state, which serve some 37,500 people. The facilities provide housing, meals and personal care for people who cannot live alone but aren’t in need of nursing home care.

The audit, which covered the years 2018 to 2024, found in a sampling of facilities that while the state is supposed to do inspections in a 12- to 18-month timeframe, the Health Department failed to do so 70% of the time. Some inspections weren’t done for five years.

In on-site checks, auditors found a range of serious health and safety issues, including crumbling stairs and walkways, dishwashers that weren’t hot enough and refrigerators that weren’t cold enough, expired medications, and staff members........

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