HCA’s State Advocacy Day is coming on February 5 in Albany – a chance for you and your key staff to learn more about the issues facing home care and hospice providers in your district.
Many of these issues have been examined at length in The Capitol Report over the past year, such as workforce support, reimbursement predictability and sustainability needs. In advance of February 5, we’ll be providing your offices with an update on what’s happening in the field globally. Our 2020 financial and program trends report (see last year’s report here) will give the latest key statistics on financial margins in home care, hospice and Managed Long Term Care, as well as some of the access issues caused by workforce shortages across disciplines.
In the lead-up to February 5, providers in your district will be calling to make appointments with your offices in Albany to meet and discuss these global issues, but also particular ones: they’ll be describing their organizations, what they do, how many people they serve and employ, some of their program innovations, and ways the Legislature can help.
This discussion will naturally also include a response to the Governor’s state budget proposal, which is expected to be released just before our Advocacy Day. In anticipation of this response, we are mindful of the hard decisions facing legislators in light of recent media and state fiscal reports concerning previously unaccounted for or undisclosed Medicaid fiscal obligation amounts.
As you know, HCA has advanced a series of proposals as preferred cost offsets to help address the state’s deficit. We again reiterate our call for a first-line of productive measures to offset costs. These include: addressing statutory barriers to cost control and efficiency that can relieve Medicaid costs; supporting alternatives to Medicaid (including expanded rider coverage for private or commercial coverage) to pay for long term care; maximizing federal Medicare coverage (including for the dual-eligible population that is covered both by Medicaid and Medicare) before tapping Medicaid coverage; and mobilizing preventive or chronic-care management tools in home care and hospice that can further prevent hospitalizations or other high-cost service use.
We welcome any questions you have, and are happy to connect you with a provider in your district on February 5 – or at any time. Please contact HCA’s Director of Public Policy and Advocacy Alyssa Lovelace at (518) 810-0658 or alovelace@hcanys.org.