The House of Representatives earlier this week enacted an omnibus health care reform bill. The final bill includes three nursing home provisions that Mass Senior Care supported in order to preserve access to long and short term care.
- Creation of an Emergency Task Force on the Financial Conditions and Future of Massachusetts Nursing Home Care – the emergency task force, of which Mass Senior Care would be a member, would be required to evaluate options and make policy recommendations necessary to ensure the financial stability of the nursing homes in the commonwealth in order to provide quality nursing home resident care and quality jobs.
- Protecting Medicare Benefits – removes proposed language, contained in the Senate's health reform bill that would have unjustifiably threatened a Medicare ACO patient's benefit to access post acute care in a skilled nursing. Skilled nursing facilities provide high quality, cost-effective care and annually discharge approximately 70,000 individuals back to the community, at no cost to the state.
- Protecting Medicaid Nursing Home Enrollment – this section will maintain a dual-eligible nursing home resident's right to voluntarily enroll in a Senior Care Options (SCO) plan.
The House and Senate health care reform legislation will now need to be reconciled by a 6-member Conference Committee before the Legislature's Formal Session adjourns on July 31, 2018.