Last Week of Budget Advocacy – Take Action TODAY!

Budget discussions have been extended, and LeadingAge NY is now expecting (and hoping) for a final budget to be agreed upon and passed by the end of this week. The extended timeline means that we still have time to weigh in with lawmakers, and we are hearing that our advocacy is being taken into account during these final days. Your efforts are more impactful now than ever!

Please CALL YOUR STATE LEGISLATORS AND THE GOVERNOR TODAY with the below talking points. In addition, we strongly encourage you to take your advocacy to social media (examples below). Even if you have already contacted your lawmakers, please reach out again and make sure that your needs are considered in the final days of negotiations. Legislator contact info is available here.

FOR NURSING HOMES

In light of the nursing home staffing mandates now in effect, it is critical that we contact lawmakers repeatedly with our concerns and need for meaningful investment and resources to attract the workforce we need. In addition to making phone calls and using social media, we encourage members to share this nursing home resident/family digital advocacy letter with your network of families, encouraging them to join us in urging the State to provide more meaningful investment in nursing home workforce.

Nursing Home Staffing Talking Points:

The Governor’s recent Executive Order 4.7 acknowledges that there is a statewide health care workforce crisis; however, nursing homes are still being held to a new and unattainable standard.
Throughout the pandemic, we have done everything we can to recruit and retain our workers, despite our limited State reimbursement – everything from signing bonuses, incentives, enhanced wages, and more. (List any other examples of what you do to attract workers.)
However, the trained nurses, aides, and skilled professionals we need to reach a new 3.5 nurse hours per resident, per day mandate simply do not exist.
Payroll data show that the state needs more than 12,000 new nurses and aides in order for homes to comply with new minimum staff hours requirements. Based on Quarter 3 2021 data, 80 percent of homes cannot meet this mandate.
Without a substantial increase in Medicaid rates to pay for competitive wages and time to recruit and train thousands of new nurses and aides, the mandate is an empty promise.
The State has provided no financial support throughout the pandemic and actually cut Medicaid payments in 2020. Nursing homes have not seen a dollar of the $64 million that was appropriated for nursing home staffing last year. These policy decisions only further depleted our finances and our ability to attract the workers that we and our residents so desperately need.
Enforcing an impossible mandate during the staffing crisis will only result in heavy daily fines that deplete resources needed for staff wages and training.
Enforcing the mandate now will force us to limit admissions of new residents, creating backlogs in hospitals that need to discharge patients and limiting access to services for the older adults that need skilled nursing or rehab care.
While it sounds good on paper, moving forward with this mandate amid a workforce crisis and simultaneously not providing robust, sustained funding for our nursing home workforce will only limit access to services, further deplete nursing homes of resources, and require us to ask even more of the remaining staff that we have, who have endured with us two years of a pandemic.
I urge you to ensure that this year’s budget provides substantial, sustained funding for our nursing home workforce! I also urge you to support the authorization of Medication Aides in the nursing home.

Tweet/Facebook the Governor and Your Legislators!

Please use the below draft messages to tweet the Governor and your legislators. To find your lawmakers’ Twitter accounts, click here or contact Sarah Daly at sdaly@leadingageny.org. Messages may also be directed at Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (@CarlHeastie) and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (@AndreaSCousins).

Draft Nursing Home Tweets:

.@GovKathyHochul NY nursing homes need over 12,000 new nurses and aides to comply with the new 3.5 nurse hour mandate. Homes cannot reach this shared goal of enhanced staffing without a substantial Medicaid increase to recruit them. Please #SupportOurSeniors in this budget!

.@GovKathyHochul MUST provide meaningful funding to NY Nursing Homes in this year’s budget! A 1% Medicaid increase after years of cuts is not enough. Nursing Homes need resources to be able to compete for staff and serve residents. All seniors deserve better. #SupportOurSeniors

FOR ADULT CARE FACILITIES/ASSISTED LIVING (ACF/AL)

Please call state legislators with the below talking points! Legislator contact info is available here. In addition to making phone calls and using social media, we encourage members to share this ACF resident/family digital advocacy letter with your network of families, to help amplify the message.

ACF/AL COVID-19 Relief Talking Points:

I am extremely disappointed to see that the State Budget is positioned to completely neglect an incredibly important piece of the long term care continuum – Adult Care Facilities and Assisted Living.
After over a decade of chronic underfunding and two years of a pandemic, it appears that the Legislature is once again underfunding our sector – even in a budget year where there are resources.
An ACF is paid $43.16 per day to house, feed, and care for Supplemental Security Income (SSI)-eligible residents, and there has not been an increase to the State supplement portion of the rate since 2007. Since that time, there have been a staggering number of voluntary closures – 75 in the last decade alone – with more in the planning stages.
COVID-19 brought unprecedented challenges to ACF/AL providers, whose residents are among the most vulnerable to COVID-19. The extraordinary added costs related to COVID-19 are causing considerable financial strain.
Meanwhile, workforce shortages are at a crisis level, threatening the viability of quality non-profit providers like me and also threatening seniors’ access to care.
The State Budget cannot overlook the needs of ACF/AL providers who have been on the front lines since the very first day of the pandemic.
With that, I urge you to work with your colleagues to include a $75 million allocation in the 2022-23 State Budget to help offset a portion of the costs and losses that ACF/AL providers have incurred to date as they continue to address the pandemic.

Worker Bonuses and Wages:

The Executive Budget includes a health care worker bonus that does not include employees of non-Medicaid settings, thereby excluding the vast majority of ACF/AL providers in the state.
Both the Senate and Assembly budgets include increased wages for home care workers that would bring home care worker wages above those of any other direct care worker in long term care and aging services.
Any effort to recognize and reward the work of direct care staff must include ACFs and AL facilities. We have been on the front lines, caring for the most vulnerable populations, since the beginning of the pandemic. Rewarding only certain sectors will further destabilize the staffing crisis in this field.

Assisted Living Program (ALP)-Specific Talking Points:

The ALP – Medicaid-funded AL – has not had a standard trend factor increase added to its rate since 2007, and in the middle of the pandemic, when other states increased provider Medicaid rates, the ALP was cut by 1.5 percent.
Provider Medicaid rates would be 31 percent higher today if trend factors had not been eliminated for the past 14 years.
The ALP is the only Medicaid AL option in New York, serving seniors who are at a nursing home level of care but do not need ongoing skilled services at approximately half of the nursing home Medicaid rate.
ALPs need a meaningful rate increase to ensure access to this nursing home alternative. Costs over the past 14 years have gone up significantly, and a 1 percent increase to the rate as proposed is simply not enough and does not acknowledge the deep financial hole providers find themselves in.

Tweet/Facebook the Governor and Your Legislators!

Draft ACF/AL Tweets:

.@GovKathyHochul State funding is going to Broadway, bars and the Bills, but not for needed COVID relief funding to adult care facilities and assisted living. Don’t leave these residents and staff behind. Please #SupportOurSeniors!

.@GovKathyHochul After 14 years without a cost-of-living adjustment, New York’s assisted living programs need more than a 1% increase. Low-income older adults living in these settings deserve better. Please #SupportOurSeniors in the final budget!

Thank you for helping us keep up the pressure on lawmakers at this critical time! Please feel free to email Sarah Daly at sdaly@leadingageny.org to let us know that you have taken action. We will continue to advocate as well and will keep you apprised of any updates or additional required action.

Contact: Sarah Daly, sdaly@leadingageny.org