LeadingAge NY and DOH Meet on Home Care Worker Wage Parity

On March 12th, LeadingAge New York and other associations met with the State’s Medicaid Director, Jason Helgerson, and other Department of Health (DOH) staff to discuss the ongoing concerns with paying for Home Care Worker Wage Parity. As previously reported in last week’s Intelligence, LeadingAge NY again expressed concerns about the inadequacy of the amounts DOH is offering to make available for wage parity, cash flow problems of providers and plans, the lack of bargaining power among the providers, the potential for a disruption of services, eroding continuity of care and demise of good agencies. DOH appeared to understand our concerns with cash flow problems and offered to temporarily remove the two week lag on Managed Long Term Care plans (MLTCs) and add $30M of cash flow that the MLTCs can use to make payments to providers. They also seemed willing to work on a cash flow bridge for the fee-for-service contracts, as well. DOH appeared to have no intention of mandating that the plans pass through a specific wage amount to the providers.

LeadingAge NY continues to raise the issue of the costs associated with conducting the UAS-NY and meeting the Federal Condition of Participation requirements as adding to the administrative costs. 

We will continue to keep members informed of the latest developments.

Contact: Dan Heim, dheim@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8383, ext. 128 or Cheryl Udell, cudell@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8871