The Mills Administration announced Sept. 2 $146 million in state and federal funding for Maine nursing and residential care facilities, adult family care homes, and hospitals. The funds will support workforce recruitment and retention efforts as they grapple with shortages driven by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This funding comes on top of the $25 million in Coronavirus Relief Funds the Mills Administration has already awarded to 14 hospitals and 96 long-term care facilities to help health care organizations recover from the pandemic. In December 2020, the Administration also awarded $5.1 million in grants to 53 health care organizations serving residents with MaineCare to help sustain vital health services during the pandemic.

“Given rapidly changing circumstances due to the Delta variant, the Department is expediting the COVID-19 supplemental payments that Governor Mills signed into law as part of the biennial budget,” said Maine Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Jeanne Lambrew. “This unprecedented amount of supplemental payments for long-term care facilities will help them cover costs resulting from the pandemic and address longstanding workforce challenges as we continue to pursue our broader plan to expand and strengthen Maine’s health care system.”

DHHS will begin to distribute $123 million in funding this month, which includes $30 million in General Fund dollars authorized through the biennial budget Governor Mills signed into law, to nursing and residential care facilities and adult family care homes. The funds can be used by long-term care facilities to help address workforce issues by retaining current staff or hiring new vaccinated staff.

Additionally, DHHS will issue $23 million, including $5.4 million in general fund dollars, for one-time supplemental payments to Maine’s hospitals. The funding, which was also authorized through the budget, will be issued beginning this fall and can also be used to address workforce issues.

These grants build on Maine’s significant financial and operational support for health care providers on the front lines of the pandemic.

Early in the pandemic, DHHS provided immediate support of $10 million to hospitals through supplemental payments and $20 million to nursing and long-term care facilities and other congregate care facilities through temporary rate increases.

During the pandemic, the DHHS provided additional funding to congregate care settings experiencing a COVID-19 outbreak, personal protective equipment through the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stockpile, and extensive use of the state laboratory for COVID-19 testing, resulting in over 430,000 COVID-19 test results to date at no cost to these facilities.

Maine health care providers have also received over $660 million directly from the U.S. DHHS through the Provider Relief Fund, which was authorized under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

In its August awards, DHHS noted that 56% of potentially eligible organizations applied and 69 percent of them qualified for the payments. While additional facilities may have had pandemic-related losses prior to this program’s launch, other federal and state programs, like the Provider Relief Fund, Paycheck Protection Program and the Maine Economic Recovery Grants, had already offset those losses.