Dear HomeCare Readers,

At his State of the Union address earlier this spring, President Joe Biden called out the need to bolster care at home. As we published this issue, the administration follows up by finalizing a rule that requires home- and community-based services (HCBS) providers to put 80% of their payments toward direct worker pay—although there are still many questions about how to make that happen.

To pay homecare workers more, reimbursement rates will have to increase. And there’s an interesting argument for doing so beyond the simple cost of business. According to the direct care advocacy group PHI, nearly half of direct care workers rely on public assistance like Medicaid and food assistance. That means that increasing HCBS funding to support salary hikes would be offset if those workers no longer rely on federal and state programs. LeadingAge estimates that raising direct care wages could reduce the percentage of direct care workers using public assistance by 16.8%, which would translate to a savings of $1.6 billion. And then there are multiple other benefits, including continuity of care, improved training and professionalism, and, ultimately, better outcomes for patients and clients.

Of course, there’s a lot more to mastering staffing than just salaries. In this month’s issue, we hear from several business leaders on how to engage employees and shape company culture to help win the work war. Our cover series starts on page 20. Before that, beginning on page 15, we bring you the results of our annual salary survey, which dives into data from our readers on salaries, benefits, hiring changes and more.

As always, thanks for reading!