AALC Newsletter - January 2022

January 2022

Members,

With COVID still impacting all our lives, AALC has been working to put together an agenda for the year that will continue to advance and protect the Illinois Supportive Living Program.

Membership & Outreach

We have already received 60% of our membership dues for 2022! If you have not yet sent your 2022 dues please do so as soon as possible. We depend on our dues to support our programming and advocacy work. Questions- contact me!

Education & Training

We are planning to partner with the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services to host two educational events this year—one in April and one in October! Watch for updates regarding registration and the agenda.

Also, our Supportive Living celebration will once again be a year-long virtual event. We’ve got some fun ideas planned that don’t involve travel, so SL residents can easily participate without putting staff and residents’ health at risk! We will be launching shortly. Look for our email in the next few days!

Legislative & Regulatory

AALC will continue to hold quarterly update calls with our state regulator—the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services. If you have questions that you want us to ask HFS, send them to me! Our top legislative priorities for 2022 include protecting the Supportive Living Program’s link to nursing home rates, increasing Supportive Living memory care rates, and preserving SNAP benefits for our residents. To learn more about what is happening now, check out the Legislative Update!

Participate in IDPH's Weekly COVID-19 Webinars!

These Friday webinars are very informative and a great opportunity to have all your questions answered!

Don’t forget to register for IDPH’s LTC COVID Webinars!

FEBRUARY SCHEDULE

There will be no Webinar Friday February 11th.

Visit AALC's Website for Additional COVID-19 Resources

Legislative Update

Legislative Update:

The Illinois General Assembly convened its 2022 Spring Session and has been working remotely since early January due to Omicron. Both the House and Senate expect to convene, in person, on February 1^st.

House and Senate Leadership have convened a series of meetings this week for the purpose of negotiating the competing nursing home assessment/rate reform bills.

As readers will recall, Senator Ann Gillespie filed Senate Bill 2995 which is an initiative of the Department of Healthcare and Family Services (HFS) and includes language that would re-design skilled nursing Medicaid rates as well as increase and re-structure the collection and distribution of the nursing home bed tax.

Senator Holmes and Representative Lisa Hernandez filed Senate Bill 3116 and House Bill 4443, which represent the alternative skilled nursing Medicaid rate re-design and bed tax re-structuring legislation proposed by the Health Care Council of Illinois.

Each of the competing bills would protect the supportive living “link” to skilled nursing rates and enhance the rate for SLF, to coincide with the skilled nursing increase.

The AALC is closely monitoring the negotiations and working to ensure that the final legislation includes the requisite language to protect and enhance SLF rates for communities across Illinois.

View Current SL Rates Effective January 1, 2022

AALC is a membership-based organization that depends on annual dues from its Supportive Living community and vendor members to sustain its operations. Each month we take time to feature one of our members. AALC is proud to have Marcum LLP as a vendor member.

Marcum LLP is a national accounting and advisory services firm dedicated to helping its many clients, including Supportive Living communities, achieve their goals. Marcum offers a complete spectrum of tax, assurance and advisory services, as well as an extensive portfolio of industry-focused practices.

Supportive Living communities can count on Marcum to bring deep expertise and insightful guidance to their work, helping SL communities forge pathways to success, whatever challenges they’re facing. This has proven especially true since the onset of the global pandemic. Marcum has been there to help Supportive Living communities understand and navigate the complex challenges associated with federal and state reporting requirements of various COVID relief funds.

In the coming months and beyond, our Supportive Living community members can count on Marcum’s deep expertise, including tax and business advisory services, to position them to meet the challenges of today’s ever-changing landscape. We encourage you to reach out to Marcum to learn more about how Marcum can help your Supportive Living community be more successful.

For more information please visit: www.marcumllp.com.

MEMBERS! If you know of a vendor who might be interested in joining AALC, share their information with us at info@aalcillinois.org and we will reach out to them. Are you a vendor member and interested in bringing content to our Supportive Living communities? Let us know and we will feature you in an upcoming newsletter.