The Department of Healthcare and Family Services outlined a bevy of recommendations to reform how long-term care is funded in Illinois in a recent report for policymakers. 

The agency recommends a patient-driven payment model to “improve payment accuracy and appropriateness by focusing on the resident, rather than the volume of services.” 

It also calls for dedicating funding to staffing increases and workforce transformation, as well as rewarding providers for achieving higher levels of care.

Other recommendations include:

·    prohibiting staffing agencies from having non-compete clauses that keep facilities from hiring agency staff that have been assigned to them, 

·    targeting additional federal relief funding to address urgent one-time needs - such as reducing room crowding and improving air quality,

·    boosting transparency of nursing home ownership and revenues and 

·    requiring HFS to study the impact on equity for residents and pay for workers.

HFS Medicaid Administrator Kelly Cunningham told members of a Medicaid Advisory Committee’s Public Education subcommittee on Thursday that the report is the summation of over a year of work on how to address rate reform.

“We look at nursing home rate reform to improve quality and staffing and outcomes for residents,” Cunningham said. “It’s really a moral imperative on the part of the department and it is a message that I think comes across fairly clearly in this report.”

Download full report here>

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