Situation Report | May 3, 2021
HCA has developed a one-page paper outlining our post-budget legislative priorities, as elaborated in last week’s Situation Report and Wednesday’s edition of our monthly Capitol Report newsletter for state lawmakers.
Our priorities and positions come in four main areas, along with a fifth category bulleting a half-dozen bills and recommendations for supporting home care, hospice and Managed Long Term Care.
Of primary importance is a repeal of the Licensed Home Care Services Agency (LHCSA) Request for Offers (RFO), which follows a “dysfunctional path, heedless of the state’s worsening crisis in home care accessibility and COVID-pandemic needs,” we state. Likewise, HCA urges further amendments to a similar RFO process for fiscal intermediaries (FI): to “prevent the RFO from excluding quality FIs effectively serving cases.”
With the Legislature’s recent appropriation of $1.6 billion in funds for the community-based workforce, HCA also calls for a principal role in the “design and implementation of this distribution,” urging adoption of HCA’s legislative proposal to secure future rates and funding for workforce.
HCA also reiterates our call for telehealth equity for home care, quality safeguards for telehealth, as well as a ‘Home Care First’ policy for New York State.
HCA encourages members to share this briefing document with your government-relations teams and in direct outreach to your elected representatives as we press legislative action in the remaining days of session before the June adjournment.