April 28, 2023 Washington, DC — A statement from Mollie Gurian, Vice President, Home Based and HCBS Policy, LeadingAge, the association of nonprofit providers of aging services, on home and community-based services (HCBS) program proposed rules to help ensure access to quality health care in Medicaid and CHIP released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS):

This Administration’s continued interest in and efforts aimed at improving access to home and community-based services is critical, given our country’s aging population and Americans’ desires to age in place. Increasing transparency on payment rates and managed care contracting practices, while at the same time elevating input from stakeholders, including our mission-driven, nonprofit provider members, should help to ensure that older adults are better able to access needed care. However – and we cannot emphasize this enough – priority number one is addressing the aging services sector’s workforce needs. We look forward to working with CMS to achieve transparency without placing unfunded administrative burden on our members and will continue the push for a smart leveraging of resources from across the federal government to increase the number of qualified staff in aging services. Without staff, there is no care.