A labor shortage in Medicaid community care programs, triggered by the Legislature’s poverty-level wages for attendants who provide in-home services, could.
Home care and hospice services support medically fragile families in Texas. Yet, Medicaid rates for attendant care have remained stagnant for 16 years.
Advocates say home nursing care wages, often paid through Medicaid and set by the state, are just too low to keep nurses and nursing assistants in the profession.
The state announced it would use federal pandemic funds to give one-time bonuses to health-care workers but it omitted the largest group of health attendants, who provide services to about 130,000 low-income Texans.