The LeadingAge Kansas Board of Directors voted to join a lawsuit with not-for-profit and mission-minded providers to overturn the new CMS Staffing Mandate. While we share CMS’s goal of ensuring all nursing home residents receive quality care, we don’t agree that the staffing mandate gets it right. Rather, the mandate is an overreach by CMS that places an undue financial burden on states, providers, and Americans. The parallel lawsuit bolsters efforts in Texas and provides another way to oppose the mandate and protect access to long-term care.
This lawsuit was initiated by the three Attorneys General from the states of Kansas, South Carolina, and Iowa, and was filed October 8th in the Northern District of Iowa. Multiple other Attorneys General have joined the lawsuit including Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia. While the Attorneys General will focus on the undue burden the mandate will have on state budgets and taxpayers, we, as co-plaintiffs, have the opportunity to express concerns on how the mandate may impact access to care for seniors in our state.
To date, LeadingAge state affiliates in Kansas, South Carolina, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, New Jersey/Delaware, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri Southeast (which includes Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana), Oklahoma, Ohio, Tennessee, South Dakota and Virginia.
Two individual nonprofit providers from Kansas have also agreed to join the suit. We are grateful to the Dooley Center in Atchison, KS and Wesley Towers in Hutchinson, KS for their leadership as plaintiffs and for making their voices heard on behalf of nonprofit aging services in our state.
There are two primary purposes to our strategy in joining the lawsuit:
- To push back on harmful mandates for our members and nursing homes across the country. To reinforce standing and substantive arguments for the states’ suit and injunction, we completed a “Declarations of Harm” that outlines specifics on how the mandate will harm our members if allowed to take effect.
- To seek to vacate certain of the more onerous requirements in the rule. By joining, we have asked the court to vacate and declare unlawful the (i) staffing requirement, (ii) enhanced facility assessment and (iii) HPRD requirements. This focused approach would provide relief from the most burdensome aspects of the rule.
This additional lawsuit, on top of the lawsuit filed in Texas, provides our members with another opportunity to make our case and potentially expand the discussion to address additional regulatory burden recently implemented by CMS.
CMS has exceeded their authority and acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner with the mandate and other proposed CMS initiatives. LeadingAge national and states have advised CMS for decades that a one-size-fits-all policy model designed to address the poor performer does not work. Instead, it drives high-quality, mission-based providers out of this portion of the healthcare system.
LeadingAge Kansas and its members remain committed to providing safe, quality care to older adults. It is imperative to work together to identify policies that truly improve the comprehensive care of older adults and while supporting our ability to serve.
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