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Politics

Florida ALFs Face Rising Costs, Skilled-Worker Shortage

April 12, 2019 - 9:00am

The Tallahassee-based Florida Assisted Living Association (FALA) announced Thursday dire findings from a study that found Florida’s more than 3,000 ALFs facing challenges in collecting revenue and finding skilled workers to fill vacancies. 

The new study completed by the University of Florida Bureau of Economic and Business Research (BEBR) has found that as the need for ALF services in Florida increases, so are the cost and challenges faced by the ALF providers. Fifty-one percent of providers surveyed said they experienced bureaucratic processes with Medicaid health plans that resulted in a loss of revenue for their assisted living facility.

“If Florida wants to remain an attractive place for our increasing elderly population, then we must invest in making sure people have access to quality health care in our state,” said Shad Haston, CEO of FALA. “This study raises awareness of the burden being placed on our ALF communities and will hopefully encourage our legislators to take the appropriate course of action.”

FALA commissioned BEBR to conduct a study examining the cost of Florida’s ALFs incur to provide care, the challenges they face when collecting revenue, and to gather opinions from the general population about long term health. To complete the study, BEBR developed and administered both an online and a phone survey of ALF providers and Florida adults.

Here are the study's pertinent finding:

  • During  2018,  72.5 percent of  ALFs in Florida had  trouble finding skilled  workers  to  fill vacancies. In most cases, facilities raised wages or increased benefits to attract/retain good employees, particularly, direct care employees.

  • More than half of the facilities reported having experienced a loss of revenue due to bureaucratic processes with Medicaid health plans.

  • More  than  one-third  of  the  facilities  were  not  able  to  collect  revenue  because  the administrative costs involved were too high. The main sources of revenue loss reported were Medicaid LTC Program health plans and Medicaid (MMA) Program.

  • The cost of liability insurance, property taxes, and utilities increased between fiscal years

  • 2016 and 2017. Property taxes paid increased by 140 percent, and liability insurance premiums and utility costs increased by 27.6 and 14.1 percent respectively.

  • Nearly three‐fourths of the survey respondents obtained a loan in the last two years.

  • Although more than half had multiple reasons for obtaining a loan, the most common reason was to comply with the new power generator rule.

  • Seventy-six percent of the general public agreed that the State of Florida should increase the budget for the Medicaid Long Term Care Program when more money is needed to pay for ALF care of low-income seniors.

For access to the study, click here

Comments

Maybe Nancy Polisi and rat face Chuck Shumar will send some of their beloved invaders from south of the border to help us out!!! Dont hold your breath on that one!!!@

Please read your Bible again.

STOP promoting Florida as "the" place for retirees! STOP building nickel and dime subdivisions as places for them to retire to! Ultimately ... many of them age out here and end up in Florida ALFs and nursing homes on Medicaid and the public dole. It's a losing proposition.

We need to quickly establish training programs to assist direct healthcare providers with the skills they need to be able to fill those much needed assisted living nurses for our elderly no matter what income demographic they fall into. We must have top notch nurses and medical assistants to care for our fast growing elder care needs here in Florida. What we need is an abundance of specially trained medical staff to fill these jobs. By training up our own medical staff at the state level, that will not only provide high paying skilled labor with jobs but will balance out with the increased number of qualified workers available to keep the costs in check while still providing good paying jobs. Win, win for everyone. There is money available from Federal grants to subsidize State funds in all kinds of technical and other skill set training programs if I"m not mistaken. The State needs to find those Federal resources now while the Trump Administration is focusing on retraining workers to meet the demands of our fast growing economy. Don't wait until the Dems destroy these resources so they can throw more money to welfare programs that do nothing but produce more welfare recipients.

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