Payment update included in Senate draft health care reform legislation

Your outreach to legislators on the fiscal 2010 Medicare payment update made a difference. The Senate Finance Committee’s draft health care reform measure allows for the full payment update next year for skilled nursing facilities, home health care and hospice providers. The bill also implements one of our long-standing objectives: a better accounting under Medicare for the resources nursing homes commit to nurse staffing. The Finance Committee’s proposal will be merged with the health care reform draft that the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee issued earlier in the summer. We must keep reminding legislators that final health care reform legislation must include the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) provisions for a new system of financing the services you provide.