May, 2010

 Please join us at our next statewide meeting on Saturday, May 15, 2010 from 10:30-2:30 at the Chalgian & Tripp Law Office in East Lansing, 1019 Trowbridge Road (near the Trowbridge exit for I-496 and Route 127) (please note the new location).  And plan on joining us for our next meeting on Saturday, July 10 (same location at Chalgian & Tripp) as well.  Thanks to attorneys Doug Chalgian and Amy Tripp for their hospitality!  If you plan to attend the May meeting, please RSVP to Alison Hirschel at hirschel@lsscm.org or 517-394-2985 x231 by May 13.  We need your help. Join us!                                                                                 

1.Campaign Elects Board Members— At our March meeting, we re-elected our state Chairperson, Bill Mania, of Southfield, as well as Treasurer Paul  VanWestrienen (Portage), Secretary Carole Newburry (Kalamazoo), and board members John Weir (Kalamazoo) and Toni Wilson (Waterford). Elections are held every two years.  The board also decided to add the position of Vice-Chair and we were delighted to elect local ombudsman Brittany Koziol (Grand Rapids) to the position.  Welcome, Brittany, and congratulations and thanks to all our Board members.  In addition to our Board, Alison Hirschel will remain as Counsel to the Campaign and we welcome the continuing help of our wonderful members on all our efforts!

2.Campaign holds Campaign Day at the State Capitol on March 18—Campaign members traveled to Lansing on March 18 to stress our priorities and share information on long term care with state legislators.  Before we began our visits to legislators’ offices, lobbyist Stephanie Johnson of Capitol Services provided us with training on what to expect and suggestions how to frame our issues most effectively.  We found that many legislators and their staff members were receptive to our information and very grateful for the form we developed to help consumers select and compare assisted living facilities.  We encouraged legislators to share the form with their constituents.  In addition to our brochure and the assisted living form, we provided hand-outs on:

■        Six Actions the Legislature Must Take to Protect Vulnerable Long Term Care Consumers;

■        Why Medicaid Matters to Michigan;

■        The Campaign Calls on All Legislators to Support the Physician Provider Tax; and

■        Fast Facts about Nursing Home Transitions (see below for more information on nursing home transitions).

Because we spent so long at many legislators’ offices, we were unable to visit every

legislator’s office and will likely be scheduling another Campaign Day after our May

meeting to complete our visits.  If you are interested in joining us at our next

Campaign Day, please contact Alison Hirschel at (517)394-2985 x 231 or

hirschel@lsscm.org for more information.  Thanks to Stephanie Johnson for

sharing her valuable time and advice and thanks to all the Campaign members who

turned out to help us in this effort!

3. Michigan’s Nursing Home Transition Program Reports Many Successes –Recent data the Campaign received regarding the success of the state’s Nursing Facility Transition Program was both encouraging and heartwarming:

♠        During Fiscal Year ’09, the state assisted approximately 900 people to leave nursing homes and return to the community, generating significant savings for the state.  During the current fiscal year, the state expects to transition 1200 individuals.

♠        In FY’09, individuals who were received assistance from the state’s Nursing Facility Transition program ranged in age from 18 to 108!  Twenty-two were under the age of 30 while 24 were over the age of 90.  The average age of individuals who transitioned out of nursing homes last year was 68.5 years.

♠        Individuals who received assistance leaving a facility had spent considerable time in the nursing home.  The average length of stay before the transition was approximately 15 months; one individual who transitioned out last year had been in a nursing facility for 11 years!

♠        The Nursing Home Transition Initiative and the MI Choice Home and Community Based Waiver contributed to reductions in Medicaid spending on nursing home care for the past two years, the first time that nursing home spending has ever decreased.

4.    New Federal Health Care Reform Law Includes Provisions Concerning LongTerm Care—While most of the coverage of the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in Washington focused on routine and acute care for families, the mammoth bill also contained a number of provisions related to

long term care.  These include:

►        Nursing facilities must provide extensive information about who owns, controls, and manages the facility;

►      Within three years, nursing facilities must establish programs to detect and prevent civil, criminal, and administrative violations in the facilities. 

►      By December 31, 2011, all facilities must have a quality assurance and performance improvement program in place.

►      The federal government must create a standardized complaint form that consumers can use when reporting problems to their state inspectors or to their state or local ombudsmen.  (THIS PROVISION WAS PROPOSED BY CAMPAIGN MEMBER DENISE BRYANT WHO PERSUADED SEN. DEBBIE STABENOW TO INCLUDE IT IN THE HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL!  CONGRATULATIONS TO DENISE, ONE OF THE CAMPAIGN’S MOST DETERMINED ADVOCATES, AND THANKS TO SEN. STABENOW!)

►      Within one year, each state must devise a complaint resolution process that assures that facilities don’t retaliate against a resident’s family or friends who have filed complaints.

►      Significant additional information must be posted on CMS’s website Nursing Home Compare (www.medicare.gov; then click on “Compare nursing homes in your area”) including more detailed staffing information, links to state survey and inspection reports, more information on how to file complaints, and more detailed information regarding facilities’ substantiated complaints or criminal violations.  CMS must assure that information on the website is timely and includes more useful information for consumers.

►      Each state must create a website for consumers with information about nursing facilities and consumer information.

►      Within two years, nursing homes will have to report much more specific information about how much they spend on staffing and direct care and on indirect costs (such as housekeeping and dietary services), capital assets, and administrative costs.

►      States can receive additional federal reimbursement under Medicaid under several provisions if they shift some of their long term care spending from institutional to community based care and give individuals more Medicaid funded options for attendant services and community based care;

►      The federal government will extend until 2016 its “Money Follows the Person” program that provides funding to states to assist individuals to transition out of nursing homes.

►      Spouses of Medicaid funded home and community based care will receive the same protections against being impoverished that spouses of Medicaid funded nursing home residents have long enjoyed.

►      The law includes the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Program.  This is a voluntary payroll deduction program that will allow individuals who have paid in for five years to receive a number of community based services if they require long term care.

Stay tuned for more news and information about Health Care Reform and the

Elder Justice Act that passes as part of the health reform bill!

Hope to see you all at the next statewide Campaign meeting on May 15!

For more information about the Campaign, contact Carole Newburry

at cjnewb@att.net or (269) 353-6445.