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The Campaign develops Assisted Living Disclosure Form to help families pick the Assisted Living facility that best meets their needs  Click here to see the form

The Campaign obtained the state’s agreement to permit short stay nursing home residents on Medicaid to use their incomes to maintain their homes instead of paying most of their income to the nursing home as their patient cost of care. Short stay nursing home residents can now be assured they still have a home to go to when they are ready to leave the nursing home.  For information on this benefit, contact Alison Hirschel at hirschel@lsscm.org or (517) 394-2985 x 231.

After learning that some nursing homes were not permitting residents with power wheelchairs to use those chairs in the facility, the Campaign and other advocates persuaded the Bureau of Health Systems to issue an Alert to all nursing homes in the state advising the facilities of the residents’ right to use their power wheelchairs and requiring nursing homes to attempt to accommodate residents’ needs and desire to use their chairs.

The Campaign and the State Long Term Care Ombudsman have encouraged the Department of Community Health to enforce a long neglected state statute that requires all nursing home beds certified for either Medicare or Medicaid to be certified for both programs. Doing so will ensure residents are not involuntarily discharged when their source of payment for their care changes. The state is gradually implementing this requirement.

The Campaign and other advocacy groups have worked in partnership for many years to increase long term care consumers’ access to home and community based care. That advocacy has been successful, despite the state’s on-going budget crisis, because the MiChoice Home and Community Based waiver program (which provides long term care services to individuals at home who would otherwise have to be in nursing homes) has been one of the only programs to receive substantial increased funding in recent years.  In addition, with support from the advocacy community and the Granholm Administration, hundreds of individuals every year are transitioning out of nursing homes and receiving the supports and services they need to live in their homes and communities.

The Campaign and other advocates were successful in advocating for the availability of MiChoice Home and Community based care in adult foster care and homes for the aged as well as in people’s own homes and in unlicensed assisted living. This new option will allow many long term care consumers to remain in the assisted living facilities in which they currently live even when their needs increase or to choose a setting other than a nursing home to receive long term care services.

The Campaign has extraordinary access to state officials and meets regularly with the State Long Term Care Ombudsman, legislators and top officials in the Department of Community Health (which includes the Bureau that is responsible for Medicaid, the Bureau that regulates nursing homes, and the Office of Services to the Aging) and the state Budget Office to talk about policies and problems that affect long term care consumers and to ensure policy makers understand consumers' real needs.