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Legislative Bulletin: Preparing for the Final Six Weeks of Session

April 22, 2022

LeadingAge NY Publishes Comprehensive Final Budget Overview

On April 9th, the State Legislature completed their work on the final budget for State Fiscal Year (SFY) 2022-23, effective for the period April 1, 2022 through March 31, 2023. The final budget includes significant investments to support long-term care and aging services as well as the ongoing recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Major initiatives addressed in the final budget agreement include policies aimed at rebuilding our health care workforce, with worker bonuses, nursing home workforce funding and a $3 minimum wage increase for home health care workers. On Tuesday, LeadingAge NY published a comprehensive final budget overview summarizing the provisions that affect long term care, post-acute care, and senior services providers and the people they serve.

During this year’s budget negotiations, LeadingAge NY mobilized our members in pursuit of our shared budget priorities and saw remarkable engagement in coordinated advocacy efforts. Thanks to our members’ advocacy, we secured needed investments in long-term care services, including funding to support nursing home staffing requirements and a new $1.6B, multi-year capital program for eligible health care facilities and programs, including nursing homes, home care and hospice and assisted living. Overall, our efforts helped secure a State commitment to fund an increase in home care wages exceeding $7B over four years and helped ensure $374M over two years in targeted funding to nursing homes to help offset the cost of meeting minimum staffing requirements enacted last year, as well as an increase in funding for financially distressed nursing homes. We were successful in securing investments in workforce development, advancing many recommendations from our member Workforce Task Force. We were able to prevent several onerous and harmful proposals, such as the competitive procurement of Managed Long Term Care (MLTC) plans, from being included in the final budget agreement, and we successfully modified several new proposals and existing laws to mitigate impacts on membership. And, for the first time in years, we saw an across-the-board (ATB) increase in provider Medicaid rates, rather than cuts.

These outcomes would not have been possible without the committed advocacy efforts of the LeadingAge NY membership. We thank all of our members and allies for their partnership in advocacy!

 

Preparing for the Final Six Weeks of Session

While this year's budget work has officially concluded and we can indulge in a brief sigh of relief, our work for the 2022 Legislative Session is far from over. Session is scheduled to conclude on June 2nd, and over the next six weeks, lawmakers will be taking up their remaining legislative priorities and attempting to address issues that were not included in the final spending plan. For a sense of the big picture, earlier this week the Gotham Gazette posted an article detailing the top 12 issues to watch for the remainder of the 2022 legislative session.

With many long term care-related issues still front-of-mind for lawmakers, and with some of LeadingAge NY's own policy priorities remaining unaddressed, it is certain that we will need your continued advocacy throughout the remainder of this session.

Below are digital advocacy campaigns for some of the key legislative issues that LeadingAge NY will be working on over the next six weeks. Each link will bring you to a webpage where you can enter your information and send an email to your lawmakers on that particular issue. Please take a moment to send the below digital advocacy letters today!

In addition to participating in digital advocacy efforts, it is important that members maintain connection with legislative offices over the next several weeks. When connecting with legislators over the remainder of session, thank them for the funding that is being provided in this year’s budget for long term care and aging services – but also express your persistent workforce and financing challenges. Say that you are grateful for the support and attention to long term care that has come this year, but that the sector still needs significant resources and support to make up for over a decade of under-funding. We need allies and supporters in Albany to help us improve the system that serves older adults and people with disabilities.

Thank you in advance for sticking with us for the remainder of the 2022 Legislative Session! We will keep you apprised of the latest advocacy action items via our Friday Legislative Bulletins and other more urgent updates as needed. 

 

ACTION ALERT: ACF Penalties Bill on Senate Health Agenda

In preparation for the return to session on Monday, April 25th, the Legislature has posted its committee meeting agendas for next week. Among the many lengthy committee agendas, the Senate Health Committee is taking up two adult care facility bills that are of upmost importance to LeadingAge NY and our membership.

First, the “ACF Penalties” bill, A.196-A (Gottfried)/S.1576-A (Rivera), is on the agenda for next week. The legislation proposes an increase in potential penalties for adult care facility (ACF) violations from up to $1,000 per day to $2,000 per violation per day—or $3,000 per day for a repeat violation. Of course, advancing this legislation as ACFs are still reeling from the financial and operational impacts of the pandemic and no covid-19 financial relief has been directed to ACFs in the SFY 2022-23 budget, these added penalties will be incredibly harmful to the viability of non-profit providers. LeadingAge NY’s memo of opposition to the bill is available here.  

This problematic bill will be debated in the Senate Health Committee next week and is already on the Assembly floor, ready for passage. Please CLICK HERE to send an email to your state lawmakers TODAY, urging them to oppose an increase in penalties to adult care facilities!

On a more positive note, a bill that LeadingAge NY has long supported and advocated for is also on the Senate Health agenda for next week. Bill A.9575 (Solages)/S.1593 (Rivera), the Role of the Nurse in ACF legislation, would allow ACFs to directly employ LPNs or RNs to provide nursing services.  In brief, this proposal would do a great deal to enhance the quality of life and care for ACF residents, while also using our state’s healthcare resources and workforce more effectively. LeadingAge NY’s memo of support for the Role of the Nurse in ACF is available here.

Please CLICK HERE to send an email to elected officials TODAY, urging them to support the passage of our Role of the Nurse in ACF legislation!

Thank you for taking action on these two critical issues for ACFs!

 

Tell Us About Your Local Advocacy!

 LeadingAge New York knows that many of our members are strong advocates within their regions. We greatly appreciate your diligent advocacy work to ensure that lawmakers understand the significant workforce and financial challenges long-term care providers are experiencing as you try to provide the best quality of care and quality of life possible to residents and older adults.

If you connected with your state lawmakers during the April Recess, or have in-person meetings or events being planned with lawmakers in mind, please take a moment to tell us about your local advocacy activities! Staying informed on our membership’s local advocacy activities is critical to ensuring that we make the most of the connections you are working so hard to make. It also allows LeadingAge NY to re-enforce your message here in Albany. To let us know about your local advocacy activities, please be sure to email Sarah Daly (sdaly@leadingageny.org) or use our Advocacy Engagement Form.

 

Urge Congress to Fund Provider Relief Program

LeadingAge National needs our help to ensure that there is enough Federal pandemic relief funds for aging services providers as the pandemic continues. While Congress allocated $178 billion for Provider Relief Funds during the pandemic, most of this money has already been spent and providers have only been reimbursed for a small portion of the financial cost they have paid from the coronavirus pandemic. Providers have continued to struggle financially and if additional funds are not approved by Congress, there is a chance that this financial lifeline for LeadingAge members could cease to exist.

We need Congress to replenish the Provider Relief Fund account with at least $23 billion as part of its next COVID relief package. This assistance is needed to help providers weather the pandemic storm. Aging service providers need the $23 billion restored to the Provide Relief Fund. 

CLICK HERE to send a message to your Congressional offices and urge them to provide more provider relief TODAY!

Additionally, members can click here to read an article on the status of payments from the Provider Relief Fund including Phase 4. The article includes a link to a letter Katie Smith Sloan sent to Congress last week asking that they replenish the funds.  

 

LeadingAge & LeadingAge New York Coronavirus Resources

LeadingAge NY continues to closely follow all COVID-19 news and we are doing our best to keep members informed of updates, recommendations and guidelines from the Department of Health (DOH).

LeadingAge NY and LeadingAge National Member resources are linked below.

LeadingAge NY Coronavirus Resources

LeadingAge NY COVID-19 Weekly Update calls – Mondays at 11 a.m. Click here to join the call from your computer, android or apple device. Or you can join the call by dialing in: 877 853 5257 (Toll Free); Webinar ID: 852 964 255.

LeadingAge National Coronavirus Resources Page

COVID-19 Group in the MyLeadingAge Member Community

LeadingAge National Coronavirus Policy Updates – Mondays and Wednesdays at 3:30 p.m. Past call recordings are available here and you can register here for future calls.

Contact: Sarah Daly; 518.867.8845; sdaly@leadingageny.org

 

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