Long Term Care Industry Says It Needs More Help To Survive
Leaders from two nursing home trade associations say the long-term care industry will need continued help, both in resources and financially, to come out of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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While long-term care residents and staff have benefited from receiving Covid-19 vaccines in the first priority groups, Shamberg and Mark Parkinson, president and CEO of the American Health Care Association and the National Center for Assisted Living, said so much more needs to be done for the industry to recover.
“We need a long-term investment in long-term care,” Shamberg said.
Part of the crisis is due to the Covid-19 pandemic. But, said Shamberg and others in the long-term care industry, the problems run deeper than that. Medicaid, which pays for about two-thirds of the state’s long-term care, has been underfunded since 2014, and providers can’t offer quality care for the amount of reimbursement it receives. Shamberg said that it pays for recruiting and retaining staff and investing in care.
“We’ve got to continue to keep the elderly and the health care heroes who work on their behalf as the absolute priority,” Parkinson said.
Read the full article from the Pittsburgh Business Times.
