Fighting for Residents and Employees at the Connecticut State Capitol

On May 9, 2019 Athena and its centers visited the Connecticut State Capitol to fight for our residents and employees. Since the beginning of the legislative session, we have been advocating for additional funds to ensure quality care in skilled nursing centers.

Our centers in both Connecticut and Massachusetts have been testifying at various public hearings in front of legislative committees, submitting testimony, meeting with legislators at the Capitols and hosting legislators at their centers. The overall goal is to provide legislators in both states with facts about what our centers do, who they care for and how the state budgets directly affect our staff and their patients and the families of their patients.

In both Massachusetts and Connecticut, the states reimburse nursing homes at rates established in 2007 – not considering the changing times of who we care for and costs for operating the centers. In most centers, between 70-80% of our patients’ care and services are paid for by Medicaid. In these centers, this translates to a vast difference in the care the staff provides to what the state reimburses the center – more than several hundred thousand dollars in each center!

In Connecticut on 5/9/19, more than 80 employees from our centers went to the Capitol in Hartford to meet, face to face with their legislators and discuss their centers and what they need to continue to provide quality care to their residents. Employees from nearly every department in the Athena network attended and were very vocal!

The message was very clear: We want to remain competitive in the workforce and be able to offer wages and benefits that are attractive and put us on par with retail establishments or restaurants. It takes a special kind of person to do our work, and we need additional funding to be able to differentiate ourselves from those other industries

We are so proud of our teams for advocating for not only their residents, but their co-workers as well!

Please share this information with your state legislators and ask them to support an increase for nursing homes.