An Existential Crisis In Home Health Care

Good morning, and welcome to New York Health's weekly newsletter, where we keep you updated on this week's health news and offer a look at the big stories of the past week.

a little note

Home health agencies across the state are facing an existential crisis.

That's because of a state law passed several years ago to cut costs by limiting participation in New York's individual consumer assistance program to a limited number of health agencies that received contracts from the Department of Health.

The Medicaid program was created in 2012 to allow eligible New Yorkers to choose and hire their own paid health care providers, while allowing home health agencies to handle administrative tasks on their behalf.

Hundreds of home health agencies provide care through the Consumer Personal Assistance Program, but 270 of them will be forced to close after failing to win one of the Health Department's limited contracts.

Many are small agencies serving specific populations.

The law that started the procurement process has already been amended several times to change the criteria by which agencies can be awarded a contract.

Now, stakeholders are trying to rally support for a bill that would repeal that provision, sponsored by state Sen. Leroy Comrie and Rep. Approaching Sayegh.

"A lot of lawmakers recognize that this is kind of a disaster," said Derek Adams, a partner at the Potomac Law Group, which represents some of the affected home health agencies.

OTHER NEWS:

- Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine have received a five-year, $13.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to identify genetic variants associated with longevity. So far, the research team has identified 15 longevity gene variants by studying hundreds of healthy people aged 95 and over.

“Their long health cannot be attributed to the environment; for example, many of the long-lived people we studied smoked their entire lives," said one of the study leaders, Nir Barzilai, director of the Einstein Institute for Aging Research. "Instead, the evidence strongly suggests that long-lived people have rare genetic differences that slow their aging and make them resistant to disease."

ON THE AGENDA:

- Wednesday, 1 p.m. The Criminal Affairs Committee of the City Executive Committee holds hearings on the oversight of state-of-the-art treatment facilities.

GUESS? Send story ideas and comments to Maya Kaufman at [email protected] .

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Opportunities and goals

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TODAY'S ADVICE . The Medicare open enrollment period has just begun. Read all.

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what we read

- Doctors working at a large nonprofit health system in Minnesota and Wisconsin have voted to form unions, the New York Times reports.

- The stillbirth support bill reaches the House of Representatives after unanimous approval by the Senate, ProPublica reports.

Around POLITICO

– Newsom approves minimum wage for health care workers in California, Rachel Bluth reports.

– Via Kathryn Ellen Foley: Pfizer and HHS unveil plans to sell Covid antivirals.

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