HCA and the Healthcare Association of NYS (HANYS), which represents hospitals statewide, jointly advocated on behalf of our services in meetings with the New York Congressional Delegation at the US Capitol last Thursday. These daylong meetings stressed the integral role and partnership of the hospital and home care sectors in the health system, as well as urged Congressional support for legislation securing essential Medicare funding, including rollback of cuts, for our patients and providers.
Co-leading these meetings were HCA President Al Cardillo; HANYS Washington Office directors Cristina Freyre Batt and Amanda Ferguson; and HCA’s Federal Affairs Director Brett Heimov, managing partner for Envision Strategy.
HCA and HANYS each presented data illustrating the severe health care access challenges in hospitals and home care in NYS and making the case for Medicare funding needs. We jointly advocated for the “Preserving Access to Home Health Act” or “PAHHA” (S.2137/H.R. 5159), developed by HCA’s national affiliate, the National Association of Home Care and Hospice (NAHC), in conjunction with the Partnership for Quality Home Care, that will combat CMS’ billions in Medicare home health payment cuts under Medicare Patient Driven Groupings Model (PDGM). One of our goals was to encourage full co-sponsorship of this legislation by NY Congressional members. Currently, this legislation is sponsored by 47 members of Congress, five of whom are from New York, and our meetings now anticipate increased New York presence on this bill. While Congress is currently immersed in shaping extender legislation for federal spending, the drive for co-sponsorship and Congressional member support for PAHHA of is critical to the effort for a PDGM fix. (Learn just ahead in this article what you and all individual members can likewise do directly to support this effort.)
We also discussed challenges specific to the care of individuals with complex and interdisciplinary health care needs. HANYS shared insights from its most recent report and complex care workgroup recommendations in which HCA has been a participant. These are among the difficult to serve cases, and solutions involve multi-tiered program and funding support.
HCA and HANYS gave each Delegation member an overall presentation of our joint work together with the Iroquois Healthcare Association (IHA) and, over the past year, the Nassau-Suffolk Hospital Council, to promote and support hospital-home care collaboration models. We presented the joint HCA-HANYS-IHA report showing the tremendous work of hospitals and home care agencies across the state in innovating prototype hospital-home care-physician models of care. Examples of these models were discussed at length in the meetings, and led to the Delegation’s interest to introduce Congressional legislation to support these initiatives. We will next work to fashion and bring a draft bill to Congress.
Members and Member Offices with whom we met included:
HCA members should visit HCA’s Legislative Action Center to register your voice for the “Preserving Access to Home Health Act” with each Congressional official whose district lies within your service area. Members can access HCA’s summary advocacy document about PAHHA and why it is so critical to the sustainability of home health services. Please do it today!
HCA members wishing assistance to introduce yourself and agency to your member of Congress and advocate for this legislation, and home care overall, can contact HCA’s Federal Affairs Director in Washington, Brett Heimov at Brett@en-visionstrategy.com.
HCA will keep the membership apprised of the developments both with PDGM advocacy, as well as the drafting of this new federal hospital-home health collaboration bill.
For more information on these issues, please contact Alex Fitz afitz@hcanys.org, Patrick Conole pconole@hcanys.org, or Al Cardillo acardillo@hcanys.org.
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