LeadingAge Kansas State Advocacy Update

Your Government Affairs team has been hard at work making sure your voice is heard on a multitude of issues impacting aging services. Here’s a quick recap:

We provided testimony at the Special Nursing Home Rate Methodology Committee on September 21^st.

See a copy of our testimony here. Most of the items we asked for were included in some version on the committee’s recommendations except for an increase in the Real and Personal Property Fee.

We pushed back on our Regional CMS Office on the increase in IJs, stacking of tags for single incidents, and surveyors citing PBJ accuracy or insufficient staffing on September 21^st.

We provided examples of the instances and CMS acknowledged the PBJ accuracy and that insufficient staffing tags were not being adequately interpreted by surveyors. They plan to send out additional guidance to state surveyors on that issue and get back to us directly on the others.

We coordinated a webinar on the proposed minimum staffing rule with Kansas congressional delegates’ policy staff. 

This session will take place during our normal weekly webinar on Friday, September 29^th at 10:00 AM. Write down a list of questions you’d like to ask the policy staff on advocacy efforts related to this rule in preparation for the session.

We drafted a press release on the proposed minimum staffing rule to go out by the end of this week. 

You’ll be able to find it on our website under the Newsroom section, as well as our social media pages. The goal is to drum up some local awareness on the rule and have members submit follow-up op-eds to their local newspapers.

We contacted state legislators and federal delegates to confirm their participation at our regional Coffee Chats in October and November.

Make sure you are registered!

We coordinated two 50-minute advocacy sessions for members to attend at Fall Conference.

You don’t want to miss this – get registered today!

We started drafting testimony for the Bob Bethell Committee Hearings on October 11^th and 12^th.

We plan to provide an update on Medicaid application delays, HCBS final settings rule, survey trends, and the proposed minimum staffing rule. If you have any data or feedback to provide on these topics, please send them to Kylee Childs by Friday, September 29^th.