At-home elder care touted
Lawmakers propose freeze on state funds for long-term facilities
So say Utah senior advocates, government-agency representatives and care providers. They are so sure that promoting independence of individuals is healthier to both seniors and to state coffers that they want a freeze imposed on any public funds spent on long-term care facilities.
A special panel of lawmakers reviewing state spending on Medicaid and other programs for senior and disabled Utahns will receive the proposal at its next meeting Oct. 3. The lawmakers will make a recommendation by November, and the full Legislature would still have to act on it during the 2008 general session beginning in January.
"This is simply recognizing that the traditional skilled nursing at a care center model of caregiving is on the way out," Alan Ormsby, director of the state Division of Aging and Adult Services, said Tuesday. "I would never say there isn't a place for long-term care centers. But when you can provide safe and often more effective services at home and at less than a sixth the cost for most seniors, we have to at least begin moving in that direction."
Utah has both the authority and the blessing of the federal government. The Older Americans Act of 2006 gives states and local communities the power to make services to the elderly as home-based as possible. And the federal government's administrator of aging services endorsed the decision after speaking here Tuesday at the 16th annual conference of the Utah Gerontological Society.
"Any investment in long-term care must be in modernizing long-term care," said Josefina G. Carbonell, assistant secretary for the aging at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. "Study after study, and program after program — and you have some of the best, most innovative ones in the country here in Utah — have shown both incredible benefits to the well-being of seniors and cost savings much too big to be ignored."
Utah has had nursing home placement diversion programs for at least 10 years, she said, citing in-home services, day care, nutrition and fitness programs in Salt Lake that are models for the country.
"This step is a call to action for providers here and around the country," Carbonell said. "Anything that can be done to not damage the infrastructure of the family and the home or force Americans to spend down to poverty so they can receive Medicaid is not only what we need to be promoting, it's what the new wave of baby-boomer senior citizens is demanding."
Recent comments
My elderly father is presently in a retirement community, but has...
Dwight | Sept. 29, 2007 at 9:17 a.m.
I am puzzled about the average in-home cost of $3,700. Can anyone...
Kristi, caregiversbeacon.com | Sept. 27, 2007 at 7:00 p.m.
I have worked in the eldercare field for 17 years. I think that...
nursing home employee | Sept. 24, 2007 at 9:49 a.m.
