TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (January 28, 2022)—BAYADA Home Health Care Inc. is laying off nearly 700 employees in the state of Florida.
Notices went out Monday, Jan. 24, to the impacted employees, with layoffs effective as of April 1, 2022.
The company is closing its Assistive Care State Program, part of the state’s Medicaid home health program, eliminating 12 job positions and 682 employees.
The decision affects employees in the Brandon, Clearwater, Brooksville, Port Richey and remote offices. The closures will eliminate 306 jobs in Brooksville, 150 jobs in Brandon, 144 jobs in Port Richey and 79 jobs in Clearwater. Another three remote jobs in Tampa were also cut. Ninety-six percent of those cuts were home health aides.
“We’ve been in Florida for 45 years,” said David Totaro, BAYADA’s chief government affairs officer told HomeCare. “It just did not seem that we could sustain our business there without hurting the other parts of our business [in the state].”
Totaro added the company is working with other local agencies to ensure there is no disruption in care for the clients in the program.
The company has also hired a lobbying firm to work in Tallahassee on improving Medicaid rates. “If they can be successful, we’ll come back,” Totaro said.
