Throughout 2019 GAO, Pennsylvania office & field employees, clients, and industry partners banded together to secure a 2% increase for Personal Assistant Services (PAS) under Pennsylvania’s Office of Long-Term Living (OLTL), effective as of January 1, 2020. This increase will result in an additional $700,000 in annualized revenue, as well as an additional $625,000 in operating surplus and will predominantly affect our Assistive Care State Programs (ACSP) offices.
In addition to increased revenue for Pennsylvania’s ACSP offices, this rate hike will also benefit the state’s most medically fragile and vulnerable adults and seniors. GAO anticipates that service offices will be able to recruit and retain more home health aides and fill more shifts that are currently going uncovered.
In addition to traditional lobbying and advocacy efforts, GAO and state ACSP service offices worked together on an aggressive public affairs campaign that resulted in several articles regarding BAYADA clients’ struggles with accessing care, and opinion pieces authored by Clinical Managers (CMs). This campaign further added pressure to the state legislature to begin to solve the access to care issue. In 2020, GAO is seeking to increase the PAS rate even more—an additional 8% to reach a 10% total increase over 2018’s reimbursement rate for PAS services.