(April 6, 2023) – The budget conference completed work very late yesterday and inserted the contents into House Bill 2184. A few updates from yesterday:

The negotiators agreed to insert contents formerly agreed to in the budget ensuring that a hospital becoming a rural emergency hospital would be excluded from having to pay the Health Care Access Improvement Program assessment. Conference members coupled this with the original and amended a version of Senate Bill 194, which requires hospital district board members to be qualified electors in the county where the hospital is located or any adjacent county. The contents of both provisions were added into the empty shell of Senate Bill 42.

The final budget included:

• $61.6M/$24.6M State General Funds to fund additional payments to nursing facilities based on the number of Medicaid residents served in fiscal year 2024.
• $34.4M/$14M SGF to fully rebase the daily Medicaid rate for nursing facilities for FY 2024.
• $13M/$5.2M SGF for a 10 percent increase to add funding to increase the Home and Community-Based Services Frail Elderly waiver reimbursement rates for FY 2024.
• $5M to reimburse costs of health care providers, law enforcement agencies and counties on an hourly basis for patient observation and transportation following an evaluation; and approval for stay at a state mental health hospital and admission to the state hospital, all from existing resources, for FY 2024.
• $142M from federal American Rescue Plan Act funds for health facilities tied to Wichita State University and the University of Kansas.
• Language from House Bill 2378 for the NE Kansas Veterans Home in Topeka (transferring land from the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services to the Veterans Administration).
• $600M for the State Rainy Day Fund.

The budget will run in a conference committee report in both the House and Senate.