Atria Home Care to close Garden City operations, lay off 161 in January

Atria Home Care LLC, a Garden City-based provider of home health care services for the elderly, will be closing its doors in January, laying off 161 workers, according to state filings.

Atria said in a notice to the state that due to "economic" reasons, the home health business would be closing its doors on Jan. 8. Headquartered at 200 Garden City Plaza, Atria Home Care provides services to seniors living in Nassau, Suffolk, Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx, and Westchester counties, according to its website.

The company is affiliated with Atria Senior Living, a national operator of assisted living communities and memory care facilities.

"After careful consideration, we have made the decision to discontinue operations at Atria Home Care in an effort to focus on our core business of social model senior living communities," the company said in a statement issued to Newsday.

The company did not disclose how many patients its workforce serves, or how many of the workers being laid off work directly with clients. Atria did say it was working to help transition clients and employees into different service providers.

"We are working with all home care customers and employees on a transition to other home care providers and are committed to supporting our employees and clients through these changes over the next several weeks," the company said.

Although the company did not specify why it would be discontinuing its local home health aide operations, experts in the industry said home health agencies continued to face many structural headwinds.

"Funding for these organizations’ needs is always a challenge," said Kathy Febraio, president and chief executive of the New York State Association of Health Care Providers, a trade group representing around 125 home care agencies.

Because most home health agencies rely on state-regulated Medicaid reimbursements for the services they offer, they often don’t have the resources to pay workers significantly more than other industries, like retail.

In turn, that means its harder to hire and keep workers even as the need for their services are projected to grow as populations in regions like Long Island become grayer.

An estimated 48,770 workers are employed as home health aides on Long Island, with a median wage of $37,610, according to recent state Department of Labor figures. Employment in the field is projected to grow to 70,210 by 2030, according to Labor Department projections.

The state has attempted to deal with the need for home health workers by mandating minimum hourly pay for aides. On Long Island, a state mandated minimum wage for home care workers of $18.55 is set to increase to $19.10 on Jan. 1

Despite that, Febraio said reimbursements from Medicaid had not kept up with the mandated increases in minimum wage, putting operators in an ongoing bind.

"Getting appropriate funding is critical to supporting the workforce that you need to have in order to accept new cases and be able to provide appropriate care," she said.