Nursing Home Workers Win $125 Million in New Funding Through Industry Partnership
For Immediate Release: July 12, 2024
Contact: Scott.Vogel@seiuhcpa.org
(Harrisburg, PA) — Pennsylvania’s seniors, adults with disabilities, families, and home care consumers face a broken long-term care system, with poverty wages driving the sector-wide staffing crisis.
In response, the final state budget takes steps to help address the workforce shortages by investing $125 million in new funding for Pennsylvania’s nursing homes. Through a new joint partnership between healthcare workers and the Pennsylvania Health Care Association, the association representing the industry, the two sides agreed to work together to direct public dollars towards rebuilding the skilled care workforce and improving high-quality care for residents.
Healthcare workers know there is still more work to do to ensure every Pennsylvanian has access to dignified, quality care at home or in a nursing facility and look forward to making this a reality.
Matt Yarnell, President of SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania, issued the following statement:
“This state budget is a strong step forward that responds to Pennsylvania’s long term care crisis.
“This budget increases funding to provide quality care for seniors and nursing home residents, protects the integrity of our public education system and stops school privatization and vouchers, and invests in a range of vital and human services to strengthen our communities.
“The final budget is a testament to the power, dedication, and activism of healthcare workers willing to advocate for those whom we serve. We successfully increased long term care funding by $125 million with accountability that ensures that providers have to direct more of that money towards quality care and support higher staffing regulations in our nursing facilities.
“While participant-directed home care workers providing Personal Assistance Services (PAS) continue to make progress through this budget and our advocacy with the Department of Human Services, more investment is needed in Pennsylvania’s 125,000 PAS workers to ensure seniors and people with disabilities are able to receive care at home. We continue to call on Senate Republicans to set partisanship aside and work with the Democratic House to address this crisis and work to rebuild our caregiving workforce, raise wages, and provide good and life-sustaining jobs with benefits and to care for our rapidly aging population.
“We recognize our stalwart legislative champions, Speaker of the House Joanna McClinton, who fought tirelessly to raise the wages of participant directed homecare workers throughout the budget negotiation and State Representatives Jessica Benham (D) and Representative Jason Ortitay (R), who continue to fight and advocate for home care workers and home care funding increases. We call for the urgent passage of HB2372 to invest in and support our essential caregivers.
“Lastly, we call on the Senate to finally take up the Patient Safety Act, HB106 which has been stalled in the chamber for a year now. The Patient Safety Act will save lives, save money, and bring more nurses to the bedside to improve patient care,” said Matt Yarnell.
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SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania is the state’s largest and fastest-growing union of nurses and healthcare workers, uniting tens of thousands of professional and technical employees, direct care workers, and service employees in hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, home- and community-based services, and state facilities across the Commonwealth. SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania members are committed to improving the lives of health care workers and ensuring quality care and healthy communities for all Pennsylvanians.
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