CMS: Medicaid Funding a ‘Key Lever’ to Improving Nursing Home Quality, Staffing

In line with the Biden administration’s nursing home reform initiatives outlined in February, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is encouraging states to allocate Medicaid dollars toward improving staffing, and help the federal agency fully realize its goal of strengthening quality of care, accountability and transparency in the sector.

The agency listed several examples of states bumping up their Medicaid rates to support staffing and quality initiatives in a memo published on Monday – Illinois and California among them.

Illinois’s $700 million in facility staffing incentives, implemented this year, involve a data-driven staffing ratio program and wage incentive initiative – specifically the CNA tenure and promotion payments program to increase and maintain wages for certified nursing assistants.