Nursing homes, ALFs asking for $15B more in federal funding to aid census recovery
The American Health Care Association is pushing to get an additional $15 billion injected into the Provider Relief Fund for skilled nursing and assisted living facilities in order to boost recovery throughout the industry.
“We feel that if we had that level of resource that would give us enough runway to get us to the place of census recovery,” Clif Porter, AHCA’s senior vice president of government relations, said.
His comments came while speaking Friday during the National Association for the Support of Long Term Care’s (NASL) 2021 Legislative and Regulatory Conference.
Porter said the long-term care sector is in the “aftermath” of COVID and the top priority for providers is rebuilding census following an “extremely difficult” operating environment caused by the public health crisis.
Average nationwide census reached about 80% nationwide before the pandemic, but bottomed to about 67% in 2020. Average occupancy sat at about 69.3% as of early April, according to AHCA’s estimates.
Read the full article from McKnight’s Long Term Care News here.
