First Adjournment Nears
The House and Senate spent the week in their respective chambers voting on a long list of bills, including several of the ones we’ve been following. Check out the Bill Tracker below. Next week the legislature will come back together for “conference committees” which are the small negotiating committees assigned by legislative leaders to hammer out compromises between the chambers on various issues and bills. We’ll have much more news for you next Friday when the legislature hits First Adjournment and recesses for a three week break. Stay tuned!
House Mega Budget Bill Contains Additional Long Term Care Funding
This week the House debated and passed out a mega budget bill H Sub for SB 42 for State Fiscal Year 2024 (which begins July 1, 2023). After some previous delays to further vet social service budget recommendations, the Committee unanimously approved all of the funding recommendations for long term care programs. The text of the lengthy bill has not yet been posted, but we believe these are the funding asks approved by the committee:
- $14 M in State General Funds to fully fund nursing facility rate rebase with inflation factor through December 31, 2023 (on top of the $15 million in SGF recommended by Governor)
- $24.6 M in State General Funds to fund a daily Medicaid payment add-on to distribute per Medicaid resident based on the percentage of Medicaid residents as reported on a facility’s annual cost report.
- 5.2 M in State General Funds for a 10% increase in HCBS-FE rates
- $3 M in State General Funds for a 5% increase in PACE reimbursement rates
- $3 M in State General Funds for senior nutrition services
Next steps: The House and Senate will begin meeting next week to negotiate budget items. The mega budget approved by the Senate does not include additional funding for long term care programs, and so there will be a wide gulf between the two chambers as negotiations start.
Senate Amends No Patient Left Alone Bill
After supporting HB 2264 and its aim to protect resident rights to visitation while acknowledging the necessity of following federal requirements, we are quickly back to opposing the legislation. The Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee voted to amend HB 2264 in several places, including the removal of the language allowing adult care homes and hospitals to follow federal requirements necessary to preserve federal funding. The Senate committee left in the liability protections for following the visitation law.
With two different versions of this bill in the House and Senate we will be pushing hard for the bill to go into conference negotiations next week in order to get the Medicare/Medicaid language re-inserted into the legislation.
Bill Tracker
S Sub for HB 2390 (Formerly SB 6) Restricting the authority of the secretary of health and environment and local health officers to prevent the introduction and spread of infectious or contagious diseases.
SB 62 Enacting the protect vulnerable adults from financial exploitation act.
SB 277 Regulation of temporary health care staffing agencies
SB 174 (formerly HB 2023) Creating the crime of interference with the conduct of a health care facility
HB 2264/Sub for SB 131 Enacting the patient right to visitation act to require patient care facilities to adopt visitation rules to allow certain relatives and other persons, including clergy, to visit terminally ill patients and other patients making major medical decisions
HB 2292 Establishing tax credit and grant program to support health care apprenticeship programs
HB 2125 (Formerly HB 2408) Exempting certain services provided in an adult care home from board of cosmetology and barbering oversight
H Sub for SB 42 House mega budget bill (bill text not yet published)
S Sub for SB 155 Senate mega budget bill
