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Our Voices Fall 2005
Long Term Care
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Our Voice is a quarterly publication of the Michigan Disability Rights Coalition! To receive your copy, please join MDRC!
Table of Contents:
- Long Term Care and Local Communites,
- Medicaid Long-Term Care Single Points of Entry,
- Medicaid Long-Term Care Task Force Recommendations,
- A Voice of Power, Now Stilled Corrie Bair, 1972-2005,
- The Long Term Prospects of Long-Term Care
- Join us for Walk & Roll 2006.
Long-Term Care and Local Communities
Congratulations to activists in the disability rights and senior communities who have worked over this past year to reform long-term care in Michigan. We are in this for the long haul!
Over 2,500 people have attended presentations about the basic changes needed to reform long-term care in Michigan:
- Single Point of Entry
- Money Follows the Person
- Stable and Respected Workforce
Over 1000 of you came to Lansing on June 9 to support the Task Force Recommendations. More than 30 of you provided public input during the Task Force meetings. Others wrote viewpoint articles in their local papers, spoke on the radio, hosted educational events and talked to their friends and family about the necessity of reforming long-term care.
But, we are not done yet! When the first three Single Points of Entry sites are announced sometime in the spring, there will be a search for consumers to sit on advisory and governing boards. Other communities will be working to form partnerships to be a Single Point of Entry as they expand throughout the state. Consumers must be one of the partners and we must be well informed. We have to monitor the legislative action to institute the recommendations. And, since it is an election year, politicians and others have to listen to us if they want to hold office.
If you are interested in participating in any long-term care activity - local or statewide – or in the Raise a Public Voice Campaign, contact Carolyn Lejuste: 517-333-2477 ext. 21 or email: Lejustec@comcast.net.
MDRC’s “Raise a Public Voice Campaign”
- A six session, in depth education program for individuals who are interested in becoming well informed partners as your SPE is launched (Spring 2006).
- Legislative alerts via your email, with direct links to your State representative and senator (Spring 2006).
- Support consumers and allies to form local groups committed to educating their community and representatives about LTC reform.
- One time overview presentations about long-term care.
- Support a consumer presence in Lansing.
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Medicaid Long-Term Care Single Points of Entry
The Medicaid Long-Term Care Task Force appointed by Governor Granholm in June 2004 issued a report with nine key recommendations in June 2005 (Task Force Report at http://www.ihcs.msu.edu/LTC/). One of the key recommendations made is to establish Single Points of Entry (SPE) for long-term care in Michigan. So what is a SPE?
A SPE is defined as “a system that enables consumers to access long-term and supportive services through one agency or organization.” These organizations manage access to one or more funding sources and perform a range of activities. SPE agencies will provide information, referral, care and support coordination and assistance to individuals seeking long-term services and supports. A SPE is about people getting quality information about their options when they need long-term care or supports, and assuring consumers and families have choice in receiving long-term care and supports when they need it.
In June of this year Governor Granholm issued an Executive Order to establish at least three SPEs in Michigan within a year.
This month the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH) issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) to establish those SPEs. The RFP expects broad community collaboration of all entities involved in long-term care and supports and is requiring broad consumer participation. Each SPE proposal must include a well-described plan for a SPE Agency Consumer Advisory Board (CAB). Consumer participation in the creation and operation of the SPE is required and proposals must include information on how consumer participation is, or will be, actualized. The Chairperson of the CAB must be a primary consumer. No more than twenty-five percent (25%) of the CAB may represent the direct service provider community. The CAB will provide input to the SPE Governing Board regarding regional issues, adequacy of service capacities, consumer experience, quality management, and other issues relevant to consumer interest.
In addition, an SPE Governing Board, or policy and oversight board is required. The proposed SPE Governing Board is responsible for obtaining, absorbing, applying, and implementing stakeholder recommendations. Consumer input must be utilized by the Governing Board to improve agency policy and operations. The Governing Board must include a significant representation of consumers and must represent the scope and diversity of the community served by the SPE agency.
Proposals are due by 3:00 PM February 17, 2006 to MDCH.
Representative Rick Shaffer introduced HB 5389 with 45 co-sponsors to establish SPEs with statewide coverage by October 1, 2008.
We need to thank the Representatives, the Governor, and everyone involved for their efforts to make SPEs a reality. We also need to continue to ensure effective consumer participation in the local/regional development of SPEs. We are much closer to having real choice over needed long-term care and supports. However, we need to stay alert, vigilant, and involved to make real choice happen.
For more information about the Governor’s Medicaid Long-Term Care Task Force sign onto the webpage:
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/SPE_ITB_Final_111005_142195_7.pdf.
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Medicaid Long-Term Care Task Force Recommendations
- Require and Implement Person-Centered Planning Practices.
- Improve Access by Adopting “Money Follows the Person” Principles.
- Establish Single Point of Entry Agencies for Consumers.
- Strengthen the Array of Services and Supports
- Support, implement, and sustain prevention activities through
- community health principles,
- caregiver support and injury control, and
- chronic care management and palliative care programs that enhance the quality of life,
- provide person-centered outcomes,
- and prevent unnecessary hospitalizations or institutionalization.
- Promote Meaningful Consumer Participation and Education by Creating a Long-Term Care Commission and Informing the Public about the Available Array of Long-Term Care Options.
- Establish a New Quality Management System
- Michigan should build and sustain culturally competent, highly valued, competitively compensated and knowledgeable long-term care workforce teams that provide high quality care within a supportive environment and are responsive to consumer needs and choices.
- Adapt Financing Structures that Maximize Resources, Promote Consumer Incentives, and Decrease Fraud.
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A Voice of Power, Now Stilled Corrie Bair, 1972-2005
Corrie Bair passed away on Saturday, October 29 after a three year fight with cancer. She had made many contributions to disability rights, and her intelligence, good humor, and generosity will be missed.
Corrie had a subtle and abiding charisma that affected everyone she met. I believe that she invested each contact she had with others with those values she held most closely in her heart. So, even if she was telling a joke, or playing cards, people remembered Corrie.
She saw into people, saw the best of their dreams. She saw these things without the doubts and regrets that taint all that is best in each of us. At MDRC, we called this state of seeing, “Corrie’s World”. In Corrie’s World, you can find a way to express the best of your intentions, there are no unbridgeable chasms, we are all part of a community realizing each other’s hopes.
Because Corrie invested her actions with her strength, her initiatives have had a way of continuing even when she moved on to another task. This will remain true. We will continue to build the tools of freedom that she began, and we will continue to remember her.
Norman G. DeLisle, Jr.
Executive Director MDRC
Corrie Listenberger Bair Fund
Before Corrie died, she set up a community fund to continue the work that was so important to her. The Fund will be used to serve persons with disabilities in Cass and Berrien counties, with special emphasis on projects that serve persons with disabilities in rural communities.
Donations may be made in Corrie's name to the “Corrie Listenberger Bair Fund" of the Michigan Gateway Community Foundation, http://www.mgcf.org/.
Go back to the Table of Contents.
The Long Term Prospects of Long-Term Care
Most Americans are aware that health costs are increasing faster than the rest of their economic lives. In fact, health care and entertainment together include about 30% of the American economy. If health costs keep relentlessly rising, health care will soon be the single biggest component of the American economy. Everyone knows that such spiraling costs can’t continue forever, but our attempts to stop this vicious cycle have been hardly worth the trouble.
Long-Term Care is a component of health care that is not covered by ordinary health insurance. Only a small percentage of Americans carry insurance for Long-Term Care (LTC). Often, by the time people understand that they need long term care they can’t afford the premiums, or may not be able to find a policy that will cover them. Because of this, LTC is an increasingly higher percentage of Medicaid expenditures.
Because the American population is aging (including me, actually), the absolute number of people needing LTC will increase. The actual cost of this increased need for long term supports is not clear for two reasons:
- The health of older people is improving generally. A person who is 85 today is as healthy as a person who was 65 in 1960.
- LTC represents a tremendous and untapped opportunity for the use of community-based care and assistive technology models which, on the whole, will reduce the overall cost impact of the increase in need for LTC.
We can expect both of these factors to expand in their impact over the next 10 years.
There are some other policy changes that would make LTC more useful to people, and improve control of costs:
- Making all new homes “visitable” would allow people to stay in their own homes longer, and also assure that people had usable homes when they left hospitals after treatment.
- The further development of universal modification of technology tools so that standard widespread applications can be easily made accessible.
- The wide availability and lowered cost for tools like location sensors that will allow safety without loss of autonomy.
These changes would help smooth the way to a LTC system that could handle the increase in need. As you can see, these changes are about making our communities LTC inclusive, rather than creating any new facility or “program”. LTC should be as much a part of the community as water and electricity - an expected part of each citizen’s personal infrastructure.
We will be working on LTC policy for at least another decade, and much of what we try to change will be community infrastructure - housing, transportation, availability of technology. It will be in the interest of everyone to make these improvements in community inclusion, and it will be in all our interests to work toward these kinds of changes.
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Join us for Walk & Roll 2006!
March 25, 2006 1:00-3:30 p.m.
Holt High School Gym
For more information Contact:
Aimee Sterk at 616-797-9769 or aimee@match.org
Walk & Roll 2005 was a great success, raising over $10,000 for disability advocacy groups. Please join us and walk or roll on behalf of MDRC so that we can continue to fight for full participation of people with disabilities. There will be raffles, door prizes, wheelchair races, face painting, food and fun for people of all ages!
Also... if you are a member of a community group or organization or want to raise funds for a project, please consider joining Walk & Roll as a partner. Partners incur no costs for organizing the event, receive a free display table at the vendor's showcase, and keep 50% of the dollars they raise with the remaining 50% going to disability rights organizations in our state. Last year people raised funds for 8th grade trips, rotary tours, and other non-profits.
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