Governor Kathy Hochul signed the 2023-2024 New York State Budget Bill into law on May 3, 2023. The final Budget establishes extensive changes affecting various providers including home care agencies, skilled nursing facilities, hospitals, and physician practices.
Notably, the Budget increases New York State Department of Health (“DOH”) oversight by establishing new reporting requirements for employers of home care aides and Temporary Health Care Services Agencies (“THCSAs”), and increases oversight standards for Managed Long Term Care (“MLTC”) and providers entering into “material transactions.” As we previously reported in our proposed Budget Alert, it also raises the Medicaid reimbursement rate across entity types and increases the minimum wage for home care workers across the State. The key provisions are outlined below.
The Budget makes changes to both the wage parity benefit and hourly wage components of the minimum wage requirement for home care workers. The final Budget does not adopt the proposed schedule that would have increased the home care worker minimum hour wage rate to $18/hour by October 1, 2023. Instead, the final Budget makes a number of changes beginning in 2024 to the minimum wage rate for all home care workers and to the wage parity benefit component for covered providers. These changes are scheduled for implementation as set forth below:
| Current ($/hour) | 2024 ($/hour) | 2025 ($/hour) | 2026... |
Judge found FBI affidavit flawed but not enough to return ballots Probe part of Trump administration effort to reexamine 2020 loss Fulton County argued FBI relied on discredited evidence WASHING...