NURSING HOME REFORM NEWSLETTER

March 20, 2006
 

Three bills have passed that we are pretty happy about, and you should be, too, because your support helped do it. But there is still trouble getting the staffing problem fixed. Here are the details in our legislative update:

Sen. Julie Denton, R-Louisville, says she will have no staffing bill in her health and welfare committee this session. "That’s what the resolution is all about," she said, referring to SJR 176 which she and Sen. Ernesto Scorsone, D-Lexington, got passed. Her comment came as no surprise because we had been told over and over by Democratic House leaders that the Senate would not pass staffing legislation, and that was that. Chairman of the House Health & Welfare Committee Tom Burch, D-Louisville, said it would be a "waste of important time" for his committee to consider the staffing bill, House Bill 362, introduced in this session again by Rep. Kathy Stein, D-Lexington. A time waste, said Rep. Burch because he was told by Senate leaders that no bill on nursing home minimum staffing standards would pass in this session. "I don’t want to waste my committee member’s time on something that has no chance," he said. Another Democratic leader told us the obvious: "You gotta understand, Bernie, the nursing home industry is very wealthy and they have spent big bucks in seeing that no staffing bill passes." We knew that. And we also know that only public opinion can turn the tide, and that takes time. This where you supporters of nursing home reform come in.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

You have to keep pushing the lawmakers to do something, and this election year is a good time to do it. Remind your legislator that your vote for him/her depends on support he/she gives for meaningful nursing home staffing reform. And that means being FOR minimum staffing standards.

My wife cooks a dessert called "The next best thing to Robert Redford," a ladies choice, but also gobbled up by the men, too. The legislature has passed a resolution that is the next best thing to staffing legislation. It is Senate Joint Resolution 176. It’s the work of Sen. Ernesto Scorsone who had legislation like it a couple sessions ago. But this time Sen. Scorsone was able to get Sen. Julie Denton to co-sponsor it, insuring its passage through the Senate because she heads the Senate Health & Welfare Committee. We are delightfully surprised with Sen. Denton wanting to help nursing home reform. She should be given high credit for her work on this legislation. It is the next best thing to a staffing measure, and the following news release we sent out explains:

NEWS RELEASE

February 13, 2006

In what may be the first breakthrough ever in solving the quality-of-care problem in many nursing homes in Kentucky, two state senators – one a Democrat and the other Republican – have introduced a resolution directing the state to take advantage of quality improvement programs offered by the federal government.

The bipartisan measure has been filed as a Senate joint resolution by Sen. Julie Denton, R-Louisville, and Sen. Ernesto Scorsone, D-Lexington.

The resolution directs the state Cabinet for Health and Family Services to apply to participate in any trial programs offered by the federal government designed to improve care in nursing homes. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has been discussing pilot programs in the states keyed to financial incentives for good performance.

One of the key areas in improving quality of care is staffing. A new organization called Kentuckians For Nursing Home Reform maintains that insufficient staffing is the key problem – although not the only one – in nursing homes.

The organization has been fighting for minimum staffing standards in nursing homes, an issue that so far has gone unresolved by lawmakers.

"This is historic. This is a breakthrough," said Bernie Vonderheide, president and founder of the advocacy group. "It shows that lawmakers finally realize something must be done to improve the quality of care in nursing homes."

Among other things, the pilot programs in the states would develop financial rewards for the nursing homes that improved staffing patterns, training and turnover rates.

"There are some 23,000 ‘Forgotten Kentuckians’ in nursing homes all over the state who today are applauding this effort by these two state senators," Vonderheide said.

Kentucky Medicaid Commissioner Shannon Turner said representatives of the nursing home industry said, "Yes, explore it," referring to SJR 176. The administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on the federal level, Dr. Mark McClellan, in a New York Times interview, said that "the Bush administration wants to link payment of nursing homes to the quality of care they provide." He said he expected to test such a ‘pay for performance’ system this year.

This is what Kentucky now has to jump on quickly, so that we become one of the test programs in the nation. We have some good people in the Cabinet for Health and Family Services who can get this job done. C’mon Mark Birdwhistell, let’s see your stuff.

We all know that many times nursing homes are tipped off that they are going to be inspected by the state. Such inspections are meaningless if they are not a surprise. State Sen. Tom Buford, R-Nicholasville, sponsored legislation that would cause any state employee tipping off a nursing home to be fired. That legislation, SB 141, has now passed both the House and Senate and waits for the governor's signature. This was one of our top legislative priorities and we have Sen. Buford and Rep. Kathy Stein to thank for its successful passage. Rep. Stein helped push it through the House.

Unbelievable as it seems, there still are more than 20 nursing facilities in Kentucky that either have no sprinkler system or are only partially sprinkled. The state cannot give you a definite figure. They say only that they are going to begin checking how many there are with fire safety deficiencies beginning this year when they do their annual inspections. The federal government says there are thousand of nursing homes in the nation without sprinkler systems. This when just three years ago nursing home residents were killed in horrible fires in Nashville and Connecticut. But the federal government is still dragging its feet, mostly because the nursing home industry – agreeing that something should be done -- but pleading a lack of money necessary to install sprinklers. Into all this steps Rep. Susan Westrom, D-Lexington, whose House Bill 121 became a unique approach to helping on the problem in Kentucky. Her bill, which has now passed both chambers and awaits the governor’s signature, says that any nursing homes without sprinklers must notify in writing people applying for admission to their facilities that they have no fire safety sprinklers. Anyone would be crazy to put a loved one in a facility that had no fire safety sprinkler system. Bravo, Rep. Westrom. This was one of our top priority bills this session and we are pleased that it is now becoming law.

Thelma Connelly, 96, was one of the 15 patients to die in a Nashville nursing home fire. Here is what her son was quoted as saying about it:

"In all the times I was there, I don’t think I ever once looked up to see if there was a sprinkler. That’s the guilt I have… When you put someone in a nursing home, you look for a nice clean place, a place where they’ll take good care of someone, where the food is good. Fire safety is probably down the list of things most people look at. I never did." -- Bobby Connelly, who was one of the first on the scene because he is a firefighter.

Arkansas based Beverly Enterprises, the second largest nursing home corporation in the U.S., has been sold to Fillmore Capital Partners affiliate Pearl Senior Care for $2.29 billion. Beverly has nine nursing homes in Kentucky. Former executives of the corporation cashed out for hundreds of millions of dollars. Now the new owner is hinting that unless Arkansas enacts tort reform, they will move their headquarters out of Little Rock. Also, the new Beverly owners are changing the name of the company to Golden Gate National Senior Care Holdings LLC. They will call the facilities "Golden Gate." …. Extendicare, the big Canadian nursing home company, is thinking about selling out, maybe to Fillmore Capital. They have 18 nursing homes in Kentucky. Billions of dollars are involved in the possible deal….. Meanwhile, Kindred Healthcare of Louisville that has 14 nursing homes in Kentucky just completed a $125 million cash deal to purchase a bunch of nursing homes and assisted living facilities in Massachusetts and Maine.

A young Nun

A young Nun named Sr. Margaret Mary, who worked for a local home health care agency, was out making her rounds when she ran out of gas. As luck would have it there was a gas station close by.

After looking through her car for something to carry to the station to fill with gas, she spotted a bedpan she was taking to the patient. Always resourceful, she carried it to the station, filled it with gasoline, and carried it back to her car. As she was pouring the gas into the tank of her car two men watched her from across the street. One of them turned to the other and said: "If that car starts, I'll become a Catholic!"

-- From Gertrude Gajardo by way of Joe Isaac