Over 100 members of the nursing facility community including residents, staff and service vendors took to the State House on January 28th to kick off Mass Senior Care’s FY 2021 Budget Advocacy Campaign to urge legislators to support funding for quality nursing home care. Mass Senior Care provided materials for legislators highlighting the critical need to update and modernize the MassHealth funding formula in order to ensure quality resident care and investments in staff.
Following the legislative visits, members of the nursing facility community filled a State House hearing room for the Joint Committee on Elder Affairs’ hearing on the Nursing Home Ballot Initiative, House Bill 4304. At the public hearing, Ballot Initiative initial signers, nursing facility administrators, staff and vendors offered compelling testimony on the bill which would establish adequate Medicaid funding. Tom Lavallee, Chief Operating Officer of Alliance Health & Human Services and Chairman of Mass Senior Care stated that, "Massachusetts nursing facilities are in the midst of a historic financial and workforce crisis. This crisis impacts all nursing facilities – not for profit, for-profit, family-owned – and is directly attributable to a MassHealth payment system that has not kept pace with the cost of nursing facility care over the last decade.”