News

PHCA President and CEO Michael Jacobs expressed deep disappointment that the long-delayed 2025–26 state budget fails to adequately support Pennsylvania’s frail seniors and the nursing home staff who care for them, urging state leaders to prioritize these needs moving forward.

The Pennsylvania Health Care Association (PHCA), Pennsylvania’s leading voice for long-term care in the commonwealth, today announced Michael Jacobs has been appointed as the new President and CEO, effective October 6, 2025. Jacobs will officially begin with PHCA in early September to begin the transition. This appointment comes after current President and CEO Zachary Shamberg shared his plans in June to leave the association to pursue a nationally-focused opportunity with a long-term care provider.

Leaders from associations representing Pennsylvania health care providers and businesses released the following statement today about implications that the Pennsylvania Superior Court’s ruling in Hagans v. Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania will have on access to care and economic competitiveness across the commonwealth.

Over 2,500 union nursing home workers and providers at Saber Healthcare, WeCare, Kadima Healthcare, and Focus reached the first collective bargaining agreements as part of the new labor-industry partnership between the Pennsylvania Health Care Association (PHCA) and SEIU Healthcare PA. An overwhelming majority of 90% SEIU Healthcare PA union members at the twenty-seven homes voted over the past three weeks to ratify the contract agreements.

This morning, the Pennsylvania Health Care Association (PHCA), the commonwealth’s leading advocacy association for hundreds of long-term care providers, and SEIU Healthcare PA, the state’s largest healthcare workers’ union representing nearly 9,000 nursing home workers, announced a new labor-industry partnership to solve the dire healthcare workforce challenges impacting residents across the state.

Pennsylvania continues to face persistent, health care workforce shortages that strain patients’ access to care, a new survey of the state’s hospitals and nursing homes found. The survey—conducted November 2024 through January 2025 by The Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania (HAP), LeadingAge PA, and Pennsylvania Health Care Association (PHCA)—demonstrates the ways patients and residents feel the effects of workforce shortages throughout the continuum of care.

Do you ever feel the public is completely blind to your nursing home’s struggles? For those of you dealing with frustrated family members trying to find a place for their loved one, I imagine their “surprise” on learning about a lack of nursing home beds is a regular reminder that your warnings about levels of access often fall on deaf ears.

The cost of long-term care in Pennsylvania, coupled with limited staffing, is challenging nursing facilities tasked with caring for the commonwealth’s fast-growing demographic. Advocates are looking to Pennsylvania lawmakers for help ensuring seniors have access to affordable and quality care.

The Pennsylvania Health Care Association – a statewide long-term care advocacy organization for Pennsylvania’s most vulnerable residents and their providers of care – has issued the following statement in response to Governor Josh Shapiro’s budget address. 

The report, prepared by Dara P. Bourassa of Shippensburg University and Sara A. Grove of Duquesne University, found the state is “ill-equipped” to address the needs of Alzheimer’s patients within its available long-term care facilities. “Individuals living in rural counties […]