ALBANY (WBEN) - As part of the recently announced state budget deal, nursing home profits will be capped at 5% starting in January of 2022, according to Governor Andrew Cuomo.
"We have nursing home reform legislation to make sure that facilities are prioritizing patient care over profits," said Cuomo Wednesday morning.
In addition to the profits cap, facilities will be required to spend at least 70% of all revenue on "direct resident care," including 40% on staffing.
Related
"For profit nursing homes pose a tension - I analogize them to for profit prisons," said Cuomo. "How do you make profit in a nursing home? You reduce your cost. How do you reduce your cost? You reduce the services to patients, reduce the food budget, reduce the staffing budget, don't invest as much in the facility - that is a destructive tension."
State Assemblyman Richard Gottfried has been pushing for nursing home reforms for a while, and when asked last month whether New York nursing homes needed more quantity or quality of staff, he answered, 'both.'
"Many of our facilities, maybe even the vast majority of our facilities, are understaffed, and many of them need more experienced and better trained staff," said Gottfried.
Gottfried was also asked what the end goal of nursing home reform would look like.
"I want people who are put in a nursing home to be in a facility that is run by people who are motivated by caring for them and who carry out that motivation by putting their money where their motivation is, and spending the money we give them on patient care," he continued.
"So, what we're saying to the for profit nursing homes, we want the money that is being paid to you either from the state or from the family, we want that money going toward patient care and patient services," Cuomo said. "We're capping the profit that they can make at a for profit nursing home at 5%. Everything else has to go into the nursing home and the care of the patient."