The Washington State Legislature released its final 2024 supplemental budget March 6. This is a supplemental budget year, which means this budget provides updates to the 2023-2025 biennial budget passed last session. Given this is a supplemental budget session and last year’s historic funding levels, we expected to have a smaller budget this year.
We are pleased that both budgets funded the Washington Reproductive Access Alliance, a new residential treatment facility for children/youth with developmental disabilities and complex behaviors, and expanded funding for distressed hospital grants, which includes funding for hospitals at risk of reducing labor and delivery services. However, we are disappointed the budget did not include funding for long-term care slots for complex discharge patients who are undocumented, Medicaid coverage of partial hospitalization/intensive outpatient treatment programs for adults or Medicaid payment increases for specialty providers.
Highlights of the budget, as well as a link to WSHA’s full budget comparison table are available in our recent Inside Olympia. (Andrew Busz, andrewb@wsha.org)
