The Virginia House Health and Human Services Committee convened for informational presentations on three major topics: DMAS's plan to implement federal HR1 Medicaid changes affecting 1.8 million Virginians, VDH's progress clearing a nursing home recertification backlog affecting 69% of the state's 289 nursing homes, and a Ryan White Part B funding crisis that has cut service providers from 27 to 14 and risks creating the first state ADAP wait list since 2013. No legislation was voted on; the hearing was entirely informational.
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Delegate Walker raised a case where a facility in Lynchburg laid off 15 people at one time because they were not fluent in English, stating requirements to read, write, and communicate in English are necessary when working with elderly patients with hearing challenges and that the situation 'is only going to get a little bit worse in some of these rural areas.' Delegate Tran countered directly: 'I want to acknowledge that a large proportion of our workforce in nursing homes are immigrants and people of color. And I think when we start talking about like language tests and such as parts of work requirements, we're not acknowledging the care, the intentional, the patience, the dignity that many of individuals in the workforce right now are giving to people who are living in nursing facilities,' and urged caution when discussing language thresholds.
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“Making sure that those who are eligible stay enrolled and maintain their coverage and that these changes do not provide, do not lead to unnecessary churn or folks losing coverage even though they're still eligible, that's really, really critical.”
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Sign in to subscribeGood morning. Good morning. Welcome to the full Health and Human Services Committee meeting. Your chair delegate, Rodney Willett here. Great to have so many folks with us this morning. We are still on our information gathering tour here as we get presentations from the administration and we've got several today that I'm really excited about. We're going to start with DMAS and want to welcome back a familiar face and a new face, but really not a new face. We have Jeff Linardi with us who is on his way out, but he's been so helpful, appeared here multiple times with us. And really, Jeff, I want to thank you for all you've done for DMAS for the state. Really appreciate that. And then the new face that's not a new face, Steve Ford, who is now with us. Steve, plenty of time in this room. He knows all of us and I couldn't be more delighted than to have him and his leadership role there. Now, it's a tough job, but if anyone's up for it, he is. And I'm really, really excited to have him in that role. So we'll start there and then we're going to…
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