2 April 2021: New York Considering Legislation to Regulate Spending by Nursing Homes

Cuomo, Lawmakers Weigh Forcing Nursing Homes to Spend on Patients

This report describes legislation currently being considered in New York's legislature that would require nursing homes to spend 70% of their revenue on patient care:

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state lawmakers are close to agreement on a law that would require nursing homes to spend a set portion of their revenue on patient care, officials said, at a time when the governor’s office is under fire over how it handled Covid-19 in long-term-care facilities.

The law is being discussed as part of talks around the roughly $200 billion state budget coming together this week at the state Capitol. Democrats who dominate the state Assembly and Senate have approved bills with the nursing-home spending mandate, and aides to the governor and Legislature said Wednesday they were close to a final agreement.

The discussions are a stark shift from last year, when lawmakers waived regulations and granted broad civil and criminal immunity to healthcare providers as the state faced a deadly surge in coronavirus cases. More than 50,000 New Yorkers have died from the Covid-19 pandemic, and roughly a third were residents of long-term-care facilities.

The new law would also be another response to criticism over how the state handled Covid-19 in nursing homes.

As a reminder, the state handled Covid-19 in nursing homes by forcing them to admit Covid-positive patients being dumped from hospitals to free up bed space. The state also blocked any testing to determine if the patients the nursing homes were forced to admit were still contagious.

The state also rationed the amount of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and other medical supplies over which it had control over to limit nursing homes to no more than 20% of the available supplies. This last action imposed severe shortages of this equipment, contributing to the spread of deadly coronavirus infections within nursing homes, many of which the state knew had severe, chronic problems in preventing the spread of infections.

Has the state cleaned out its own house already?