Please Take 30 Seconds to Protect Children with Medically Complex Conditions

The State budget is set to close shortly and St. Mary's, along with the Senate and Assembly, wants to make sure medically fragile children are protected from any changes to Medicaid. Here's how you can help! Please electronically sign the following letter by completing the requested information and click "Submit."

Thank you for all you do for St. Mary's Kids. 

Dear Assembly Members Gottfried, Morelle, Millman, Lavine, People-Stokes, Tobacco and Raia,

I am writing on behalf of St. Mary’s Healthcare System for Children to make you aware of Senate Budget bill S. 6256-C and Assembly Budget bill A. 9056-C.  Both bills contain provisions that mark a critical step toward creating a new paradigm to care for New York’s growing population of young patients with medically complex conditions. However, I ask that you adopt the language from Senate Budget bill S. 6256-C on establishing a workgroup for medically fragile children that includes home care agencies that serve this population along with pediatric nursing homes and diagnostic and treatment centers.  The Senate language would maintain the Medicaid fee for service rate for this population until the workgroup made its report.

St Mary’s Healthcare System for Children provides care to thousands of metro New York’s most medically fragile children in its inpatient facility and its home and community programs. Most of the children are care for at home - which not only provides the best clinical outcomes, but is also the most cost-effective care setting. 

The provision in the current budget bill for a workgroup on medically fragile children is critical to the ongoing care of these children. It is imperative that healthcare providers and lawmakers come together and develop solutions that protect the most vulnerable among us and ensure the continued viability of facilities that serve this special population.  

Please support the language in the Senate’s proposed Budget.  Thank you for your attention to this issue.  

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An Emerging Population

Advances in medicine and technology are helping kids survive serious illness, injury, and complications of premature birth that were thought impossible just a decade or so ago.  Nearly 95% of St. Mary’s children receive Medicaid funding to address the medical complexity of their conditions.  Yet Medicaid was not designed to serve this population of children and young adults – in fact, this population didn’t exist at the time.  Any changes to Medicaid must take the most vulnerable among us into account.