Brief ⁽¹⁾

HB 2229, as amended, enacts the Kansas Senior Caregiving Initiative. Within the limits of appropriations, the bill:

• Creates a partnership between the state and private long-term care providers to initiate a comprehensive and sustainable program that provides: improvement in the quality of long-term care; support and training for workers who provide long-term care and services; and fiscally prudent funding to prepare for the anticipated increase in the number of older Kansans needing long-term care.
• 
  
  
• Directs the Secretary on Aging:
• 
  
  

• • to establish a grant program for nursing facilities to implement and evaluate new models of care that improve the quality of long-term care and services and reduce employee turnover;
  • 
    
    
  • to modify the current Medicaid nursing facility reimbursement mechanism to permit nursing facilities to report expenditures related to increased frontline staff wages and benefits midway through the annual cost reporting cycle, and to receive a midyear rate adjustment based on these expenditures (authorized expenditures not otherwise accounted for in the reimbursement rate of the facility, not under the control of the facility and required by the State or Kansas or federal mandates shall be reimbursed as a direct cost pass-through); and
  • 
    
    
  • to establish a program that provides grants to community colleges, universities, area vocational-technical colleges, and not-for-profit educational organizations to provide on-site training of long-term care employees who provide direct resident care, evaluate the effectiveness of the training programs, and make recommendations to the Legislature regarding the effectiveness, funding, and continuation of the grants and training programs.
  • 
    
    
    
    
• Establishes within the Department on Aging a prevention program designed to lend regulatory and best care practices expertise to nursing facilities and providers of long-term care and services, and to provide advice and direction in regard to the provision of resident care, appropriate situational responses, and regulatory requirements. An advisory committee appointed by the Secretary is to oversee the program.
• 
  
  
• Directs the Secretary of Human Resources to evaluate the current education and training systems and methods utilized in Kansas for workers providing long-term care and services, and to identify and recommend any changes that will result in improved recruitment and retention of long-term care employees. The Secretary will report any recommendations to the Long-term Care Services Task Force on or before November 1, 2001.

Background

HB 2229 was requested by the Kansas Association of Homes and Services for the Aging whose representative described the creation of the Kansas Senior Caregiving Initiative as a comprehensive, fiscally responsible, long-term approach to address the challenges and root problems in long-term care.

Kansas Advocates for Better Care and the Kansas Health Care Association also support the bill.

The bill is amended to make its provisions subject to appropriations.

1. *Supplemental notes are prepared by the Legislative Research Department and do not express legislative intent. The supplemental note and fiscal note for this bill may be accessed on the Internet at http://www.ink.org/public/legislative/fulltext.cgi