Illinois Health Care Association

and well cared for. Ensuring staff is there on the ground. So staying on top of those regulations and walking members through the issues is a big part of what we do. “Similarly, we help them walk through those issues with payors. Illinois has become a 100 percent managed care state, meaning our public assistance dollars now flow through managed care organizations. So we help intercede on behalf of members when there are payment or financial issues with those groups. In addition, we do a lot of communications work, sharing with members detailed analyses of current issues. We have a pretty full scope.” BVM: Is IHCA involved with solutions to ease the shortage of skilled workers? Hartman: “Yes, that’s near and dear to my heart. One of my first big projects at IHCA was in regard to workforce development in our sector. We have always struggled with bringing skilled people in the doors. Our whole mission is resident-driven quality care – that’s what our members strive to achieve every day. And every study out there shows that appropriate high levels of staffing is how you achieve the best resident outcome. “Because so much of what our members do is publicly funded through Medicaid or Medicare dollars, a lot of our work goes through the policy world – through what we do at the General Assembly at the legislature. We try to find staffing solutions there in a lot of ways and are fairly successful. During the pandemic, for instance, we were able to create, in conjunction with the Department of Public Health, the Temporary Nursing Assistant (TNA) program. A few dozen other states have made this permanent, unfortunately, our governor saw fit to do this as an Executive Order during the pandemic. And even though we’re still operating with pandemic rules in place, he stopped the program – mainly due to a lot of pressure from the unions, which are very strong in Illinois. But it was a great program. When Illinois was at