Green Bay-area lawmakers trying to give residents more time to transfer senior living facilities
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GREEN BAY - State lawmakers are introducing a bill to give residents on the Family Care program more notice before they get transferred out of a senior living facility.
Under state law, providers are required to give residents 30 days notice that they need to leave the facility. The proposal would expand that to at least 90 days notice.
The bill received its first public hearing Sept. 20.
State Sens. Robert Cowles, R-Allouez; Eric Wimberger, R-Green Bay; LaTonya Johnson, D-Milwaukee; and Cory Tomczyk, R-Mosinee; introduced the bill in April.
The issue sparked attention from Green Bay-area lawmakers in February after 15 residents who were on Family Care — the state's Medicaid program for seniors and people with disabilities — were told they had to leave Emerald Bay Retirement Community in Hobart. Their families reached out to state legislators for help.
Emerald Bay's owner, BAKA Enterprises, told the residents in a letter that their Medicaid reimbursements were no longer keeping up with costs of care and inflation. They would have 30 days to find a new facility, though DHS protections ensure that residents would not be forced to move out immediately if the search took longer than a month.
Several of the residents' families told the Green Bay Press-Gazette in February that they were left frustrated and worried about finding a new provider in the county. One resident, Shirley Holtz, died soon after she transferred out of Emerald Bay Memory Care. Her family said the trauma of the move led to her decline.
"The stress caused by shifts to a new facility is dramatic," Sen. Cowles wrote. "Having lived through it myself with a member of my own family, as well as these stories from Green Bay whose families were impactedin my district, should bring greater attention to this trauma."
There were at least 50 Medicaid-related evictions in Wisconsin between the fall of 2022 and April 2023, according to The Washington Post.
When Ann Marra, Holtz's daughter, heard about the bill, she was thrilled to know her mom's story was making a difference. But there's more work to be done to reform the senior care industry for residents in the Family Care program — there should be protections in place to prohibit providers from evicting residents altogether especially if they are living in memory care, she said.
"It's a start in helping them. A month isn't very much time," Marra said.
State senior living organizations submitted written testimony for the September hearing that did not fully support the proposal. LeadingAge Wisconsin, a statewide association of nursing homes and other long-term care providers, believes extending the time frame to notify residents doesn't solve the underlying problem of how caregivers are underfunded, wrote Jim Orheim, LeadingAge Wisconsin president and CEO.
The Wisconsin Assisted Living Association also opposed the bill because it "increases the burden" on providers who are struggling to keep up with costs and could delay relocation of residents, president and CEO Michael Pochowski wrote.
Benita Mathew is a health and science reporter for the USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. Contact her at bmathew@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @benita_mathew.
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This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Green Bay lawmakers' proposed bill gives elderly more time to transfer
