Lawmakers Advance a Revamped Senate Bill 238 Amended bill improves care worker pay, addresses earlier privacy concerns

Denver, CO — Home care workers will get a pay raise under Senate Bill 238, which passed the Senate Health and Insurance Committee April 18. The bill was significantly amended to eliminate both a public registry that would have violated worker privacy and a requirement that could have endangered access to care for thousands of Medicaid recipients.

The bill — sponsored by Sen. Jessie Danielson, D-Wheat Ridge, and Sen. Dominic Moreno, D-Commerce City — applies to personal care workers who provide care for a subset of Medicaid beneficiaries who have medical conditions that make them eligible for benefits. These Medicaid clients rely on caregivers for help with a variety of tasks, including assistance with eating, dressing, getting into or out of a bed or chair, bathing, using the toilet, personal hygiene management, medication reminders, meal preparation, housekeeping tasks and/or grocery shopping. Personal care workers help maintain a safe and sanitary living environment and ensure the availability of healthy food for individuals unable to do so on their own.

As introduced, SB 238 would have created a public registry of caregivers’ mailing addresses, physical addresses, cell-phone numbers and email addresses. Wage information would also have been available by request. Those measures were eliminated during Thursday’s hearing.

“We are grateful lawmakers heard our concern about creating a public registry of care workers’ personal information,” said Don Knox, executive director of the Home Care Association of Colorado. “They deserve their privacy, and there is no reason for the government to collect and disseminate this data.”

Lawmakers also eliminated a provision to commit 77 percent of Medicaid reimbursement to caregiver wages. Instead, worker pay will increase to a minimum of $12.41 an hour, beginning July 1, 2020. The measure also requests an 8.1 percent in Medicaid reimbursement. If approved, 100 percent would go that first year to caregiver compensation, which includes, for example, wages, employer-paid health and other insurance programs, paid time off and payroll taxes.

“Caring for people in their homes is hard work, and our dedicated caregivers deserve higher wages now. Year after year we have asked for these increases, and we are pleased the wage issue has finally come to the fore,” Knox said. “But there is more work to be done to increase wages while ensuring access to care for some of Colorado’s most vulnerable patients.”

In recent years, Medicaid reimbursement has not kept pace with Colorado’s minimum wage increases or the cost of doing business.

“Medicaid reimbursement must reflect the need to increase caregiver compensation while also ensuring coverage for increasing expenses for care management, a growing regulatory burden and all other costs of doing business,” said Lorin Chevalier, co-CEO of PeopleCare Health Services, which serves patients statewide. “Neglecting this this balance is detrimental to patients and the caregivers who serve them. We look forward to working with the Legislature on a long-term solution.”

The Home Care Association of Colorado is a nonprofit association representing home-health and home-care agencies statewide caring for tens of thousands of Coloradans, including elderly, disabled and blind individuals cited in the Home & Community Based Services program referenced in Senate Bill 238.