Legislative Bulletin: Take a Stand against Nurse Staffing Ratios!
Take a Stand against Mandated Nurse Staffing Ratios
This Tuesday, May 20 LeadingAge NY’s nursing home provider-members will join together for an Advocacy Day at the State Capitol to take a stand against legislation that would mandate nurse staffing ratios. This legislation, known as the Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act, would create specific staffing ratios for nurses and other direct-care staff in hospitals and nursing homes.
The NYS Nurses Association and other unions will also be in Albany on May 20 holding a large rally in support of staffing ratios. Advocacy Day materials, including region-specific Issue Briefs, which include key points against staffing ratios and regional economic impact data, and a Staffing Ratio Cost Template, which can be utilized to determine the financial impact that the proposed staffing ratio legislation would have on your facility, are available by clicking here. If you would like to join in on this crucial advocacy initiative, please contact Alyssa Lovelace or Ami Schnauber at 518-867-8383. In the meantime, please send a letter to your lawmakers, asking them to oppose this legislation.
Federal Advocacy Opportunities
- Veterans Aid & Attendance Benefits: Over the last few weeks, LeadingAge NY staff, ACF and assisted living members met with members of Congress and State legislators to discuss the delay in Aid and Attendance benefits administered by the VA. Most recently, this past Monday, Gloria Harrington, CEO of Family Service Communities located in Fairport, joined Diane Darbyshire, Ami Schnauber and Alyssa Lovelace of LeadingAge NY to meet with Rep. Paul Tonko, Sen. Greg Ball and Assemblyman Michael Benedetto to discuss this significant problem of backlogged applications. Read about our meeting with the lawmakers here. Please send a letter to your members of Congress, asking them to urge the VA to approve these applications in a timely manner.
- Third Party Liability (TPL): Certified Home Health Agency and Long Term Home Health Care Program providers need your assistance in urging CMS to resume use of a statistical sampling approach or other streamlined methods for purposes of determining Medicare TPL for home health services claims for dual eligibles that were originally paid by New York’s Medicaid program. Please send a letter to your members of Congress, urging CMS to suspend the current, administratively burdensome process for determining Medicare’s TPL for home health claims already reimbursed by Medicaid.
- Older Americans Act (OAA): In 2013, OAA programs lost more than $103 million—a 5.5 percent cut from Fiscal Year (FY) 2012. These programs regained only half of that cut in FY 2014. Funding for FY 2015 is now at a critical point – nutrition programs were the only OAA programs that saw full funding restored in FY 2014 from prior year sequestration levels, and funding for nutrition programs have dramatically lagged behind inflation. Please send a letter to your members of Congress, urging them to restore OAA funding to previous levels.
Attn: CCRC Members – Register Now
LeadingAge NY will host a Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRC) Educational Luncheon on Mon., June 2 in Albany. The event will take place from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Albany Room located on Empire State Plaza in Albany. Legislators who represent CCRCs have been invited to partake in this educational luncheon to discuss the current status of CCRCs in New York, CCRC models in other states and the future of CCRCs in New York. We ask that you contact your lawmakers to follow up on the invitation sent out by LeadingAge NY on the CCRCs’ behalf. You can access your lawmakers’ contact information here, where you will be prompted to enter your ZIP code. If you need assistance with reaching out to your lawmakers, please contact Alyssa Lovelace at 518-867-8844. If you are not registered for this event, please do so here.
Continuing Care at Home Legislation Awaits Senate Vote
Legislation that would allow CCRCs to provide Continuing Care at Home contracts to seniors who live in their own homes has passed the Assembly unanimously and is now on the Senate calendar for passage. A similar bill passed the Senate last year so we expect it to pass quickly in that house as well but it has yet to be placed on the Senate Active List for consideration by the full Senate. Please call your Senator and ask them to pass the bill now. You can also share our memo of support with them. In anticipation of the bill’s passage, we have been in contact with the Governor’s office and the Department of Health in an effort to ensure the bill gets signed into law.
Calling All Golfers!
The LeadingAge NY PAC Golf Tournament is a month from today! Tee off is at 12:45 on Mon., June 16 for the 18-hole tournament, followed by a 3 p.m. pro-clinic and 9-hole tournament. In addition, there are plenty of sponsor opportunities still available for purchase, including tee-sign sponsorships. Those who sponsor a tee-sign will receive their name and their organization/company’s name on a tee-sign located on the green. This sponsorship is available to provider-members, as well as associate members, vendors and non-members. Click here for registration and sponsorship opportunities.