Senior care is a state responsibility – and a Minnesota value.
Who We Are
Two organizations. One mission.
The Long-Term Care Imperative (LTCI) is a partnership of Minnesota's two senior care provider associations – Care Providers of Minnesota and LeadingAge Minnesota.
LTCI members employ 80,000 professional caregivers in Minnesota, meeting the needs of seniors in all the places seniors call home – including short-term care, assisted living, memory care and skilled nursing homes.
Ensuring Minnesota seniors have access to adequate care and housing is a fundamental state responsibility.
In the 2023 legislative session, the State of Minnesota provided approximately $300 million in one-time support to senior care settings across the state. While this funding was an important step toward protecting the availability of care for all seniors, changes are still needed to improve the state’s reimbursement system and eliminate workforce barriers in order to build a stronger, resilient long-term care infrastructure.
Legislators must include access to care for our seniors and career wages for their caregivers as top priorities during the 2024 legislative session.
Caring for our older loved ones is more than a responsibility – it’s a Minnesota value.
The Reality We Face
Minnesota seniors and their families are waiting for the care they need because there aren’t enough caregivers.
Every week, nursing homes and assisted living communities throughout the state are forced to tell seniors and their families that there just isn’t enough room for them because there isn’t enough staff available. The choices for seniors are unacceptable — find care hours away, stay in the hospital longer than needed, or face declining health due to lack of services and care.
In the next five years, Minnesota will have 50,000 more residents who are age 80 or older than we have today. If we can’t take care of today’s seniors, what about tomorrow’s seniors?
The staffing shortage in senior care is a crisis, affecting seniors and families in every corner of the state. Less than three years after an unprecedented pandemic targeted our most vulnerable seniors, they face another crisis today – a growing shortage of caregivers to support them. Nearly 17,000 caregiver positions are vacant in senior living.
Senior caregivers aren’t making the wages needed to support their families.
We need to pay our dedicated caregivers more than $17 per hour. They deserve it. But long-term care providers simply can’t raise rates to increase wages for caregivers. The Minnesota Legislature sets the Medicaid rates, which ultimately set the rates that nursing homes can charge every resident.
Governor Walz and legislative leaders must address this crisis and provide access to care for all seniors.
The caregiver crisis will continue to worsen unless legislators take action. Without state action, more seniors will lose access to the care they need.
The Solution to the Caregiving Crisis
Fund permanent wage increases for professional caregivers.
The caregiver crisis in long-term care is not a mystery. It’s driven by low wages for extremely demanding work. Higher wages for caregivers will result in more available staff to support seniors.
Eliminate the delay in reimbursement for nursing homes.
The state can’t ask long-term care providers to operate at a financial loss, and then expect that won’t affect access to care. Currently, nursing homes must wait 15 to 27 months (as much as 2 years) before receiving reimbursement from the state of Minnesota for the actual cost of services they provide to residents.
Lawmakers must modify our state’s Medicaid reimbursement system to help providers increase pay for caregivers.
