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KENTUCKIANS FOR NURSING HOME REFORM |
“A non-profit organization dedicated to the welfare of the “Forgotten Kentuckians” |
NURSING HOME REFORM NEWSLETTER
February 8, 2007 DON’T FORGET… …. our general board meeting is this Sunday, Feb. 11 at 2 p.m. at the Beaumont Branch of the Lexington Public Library. Go to our Web site for directions to the library. Hope to see you there!
HELP TO GET THIS LEGISLATION PASSED It’s time to get busy on the telephone, or plan a trip to Frankfort to see your legislator. Here are the bills – with their numbers – that have been introduced and need your active and vigorous support. Legislators need to know that many people support passage of these bills --
WHAT CAN YOU DO NOW? We will keep you updated on these bills, and others we support, as they make their way through the legislature. It will happen quickly because this is what they call a “short session.” Go to our Web site – under “Resources/How to Contact Your State Legislator” to find information on how to contact your legislator. Also, it would be a very good idea to call Rep. Tom Burch (and Rep. Kathy Stein regarding HB 275) and ask them to put these bills they have sent for consideration to their committees on the docket immediately to be voted on by committee members.
HEY, GUV….. THE’RE ASKING YOU TO HELP We asked our members to write Gov. Ernie Fletcher when he indicated that he was not supportive of minimum staffing standards. Many did. One of the writers shared the letter she sent to the Governor. Here it is: Dear Governor Fletcher, I am writing to ask it you will PLEASE support the minimum staffing standards in nursing homes in Kentucky. If you had a loved one in a nursing home you would certainly understand the value of this bill. My husband dedicated his life to public service and he is now suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease and is in a nursing home. Staff is so slight that if I didn’t get there (and I work 9 hours a day every day) I would hate to think what shape he would be in. Most of the time when I get there in the evening he is soaked because there are only two aides for 18 residents. I feed him his evening meal. I have been a care giver for 30 years and involved with nursing homes for that period of time first with parents and now my husband. Believe me, if you were there on a day-to-day basis with a loved one you would change your mind in a heart beat! Thank you, NAME WITHHELD Taylor Mill, KY WE TOLD YOU SO…. Remember when the state administration made the state long-term care position a political appointment? We hollered and screamed for all the obvious reasons, not the least of which is that the job can be a swinging door. Or, the job can be at the beck and call of the nursing home industry that wields immense political clout. Well, what we predicted has happened. After only 15 months in the job, the state terminated Charles L. (Larry) Smith. Why? “We would like the program to go in another direction,” said Sandra Brock, the head of the ombudsman program in the Cabinet for Health and Family Services. Replacing Mr. Smith is Jacqueline Strader who comes to her new job from Kindred Healthcare, the Louisville-based nursing home giant. Said Mr. Smith about his demise: “When a person takes a ‘non-merit’ job it is with the full knowledge that political forces will likely determine the length of service…. I have some very significant concerns about the viability and integrity of the future of the Kentucky long-term care ombudsman program, its placement in government, and the possibility of restraint.” Our comment: Told you so…. WHO IS SHE? Jacqueline Strader of Louisville, 38, is the new state long-term care ombudsman. She is a nursing graduate of Bellarmine University. She has ties to the nursing home industry as a former employee of Kindred Healthcare, the big Louisville-based nursing home corporation. Her new boss in state government, Sandra Brock, also is a former employee of Kindred. Ms. Strader worked a short while for Health Care Excel, a multi-million dollar organization that does quality control work for nursing homes in Kentucky. She says “quality care” of nursing home residents will be her No. 1 objective. She also says she wants to bring all the district nursing home ombudsmen in Kentucky “together as a team.” This is a political appointment, and she would not divulge her political preference. STAYING ON TOP OF FIRE SAFETY Rep. Susan Westrom, D-Lexington, has followed up to make sure nursing homes with no fire sprinkler system or with a partial sprinkler system know that as a result of a law she got passed in the 2006 session of the legislature, the facilities must warn potential residents of what could be a dangerous situation. They must furnish the potential resident a form to sign saying they understand the facility they are about to enter lacks sufficient sprinkler protection. The state has advised Rep. Westrom that these facilities – some 15 of them – have received a copy of the new law. “In addition to having a copy of the statute, it is now part of the survey process to review the facility records to assure proper implementation of this statute,” Jennifer Mitchell, director of health care facilities and services, wrote in a letter to Rep. Westrom.
NOT SO D-LIGHTFUL According to something called the Center for Medicare Advocacy, “After one year's experience with Medicare Part D, many people remain confused and frustrated by the complexity and limitations of the benefit. Problems are difficult to resolve because of system failures, complicated data-sharing requirements among multiple entities, lack of useful and standardized information about plan benefits and appeal processes, and regulatory limitations that are more stringent than required by law.” The Center for Medicare Advocacy prepared a status report based on the experiences of advocates and beneficiaries over the first year of Part D.
DROOLING FOR DOLLARS The nursing home industry loves money. And nothing wrong with that if they would just use their wealth to take good care of their patients. For sometime the industry has been drooling over something called the Civil Monetary Penalty Fund. It’s the place where fines the nursing homes pay go, and the state can use the funds for projects of benefit to nursing home residents, with the okay of the feds. A big use of the funds right now is some $500,000 a year to pay for full-time nursing home ombudsmen statewide. Money from the fund also helps people move out of nursing homes that have been shut down by the state. Every state has one of these CMP funds, so the use of the money has come to the attention of the national nursing home advocacy organization, NCCNHR. They want to be sure the money is used as it was intended, to improve the quality of care in nursing homes. The fund in Kentucky has about $3 million in it, so by money standards alone it is a significant issue. The NCCNHR organization is watching it closely on a national basis.
STOPPING THE CORPORATE TRICKERY Some nursing homes will not stop at anything to limit their legal liability. The latest trick is to create new corporate structures by splitting into separate limited liability companies, by making each facility a separate legal entity, etc. Officials of the National Citizens’ Coalition for Nursing Home Reform (NCCNHR) have been watching this and at their recent annual meeting passed a resolution asking Congress to mandate a study of this practice so as to “ensure quality care and protection of taxpayer dollars.”
SHORT STUFF § Remember Bruce Lunsford? Nursing home reform advocates will remember him as the chief executive of Vencor, Inc. which owned nursing homes and went bankrupt in 1999. That ended, said a Courier-Journal story, in prompting suits from stockholders alleging that Lunsford and other executives misled them about the company’s wealth. Now he’s running again for governor of Kentucky. And it’s his personal wealth that makes him an early favorite among many politicos. § After Vencor went bust, it became Kindred with corporate headquarters located in Louisville. Now the giant is merging its big pharmacy business with a firm called PharMerica. If you don’t think this nursing home business is big, consider that the new PharMerica will employ up to 350 people with average salaries of more than $77,000. § Bet you’ve never heard this one: The state levied a fine on Oakwood for well over a million dollars. This was during all the problems there and the state alleged that Oakwood broke regulations, thus a fine. Funny thing is that it was a state agency fining a state agency. So now comes word from cabinet spokeswoman Vikki Franklin that “an agreement has been reached for Mental Health/Mental Retardation to pay $10,000 a month” starting last month. Sounds like the old “from the left pocket to the right pocket.” We considered using this as our “P.S” (joke) this month but it is all too serious because lots of people allegedly were hurt. § Robert Benvenuti, the inspector general in the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, has left state government to practice law in the private sector. He was one of three whom Gov. Ernie Fletcher brought in to run the cabinet after he was elected. They all had worked together at the University of Kentucky Medical Center. Former secretary Jim Holsinger left sometime ago, and now it is rumored that his replacement, Mark Birdwhistell will do the same. Birdwhistell told us that “he is not in a position to comment” on rumors that he will soon land a big job in Washington. § The new commissioner of the Department of Aging and Independent Living is Deborah Anderson, and she made a lengthy presentation at a recent Institute on Aging conference in Frankfort. Kentuckians For Nursing Home Reform noted at the meeting that there was not much on the new department’s agenda about nursing home issues. That supports contention by Kentuckians For Nursing Home Reform that the new department should have been called Department of Aging, Independent Living and Long-Term Care. Ms. Anderson said after the meeting that she will be glad to meet with advocates for nursing home reform to hear suggestions about what she also can be doing to help more than 23,000 people in nursing homes in Kentucky. § The new general counsel for the Cabinet for Health and Family Services is a lawyer by the name of Hans Herklotz. He succeeds Wes Butler who left with Mr. Benvenuti to form a law firm. Another cabinet employee, Jeff Barnett, also is joining them. The cabinet must have a lot of legal problems. A state news release said there are 44 employees in the legal section. § In the first round of funding for a program aimed at keeping Medicaid patients out of nursing homes and other health-care facilities and providing for care in their homes, 17 states received more than $23 million. Kentucky has also been working on this, but was left out of this first round of funding. § Latest Kentucky survey data from the feds show that nursing homes in the state are slipping in quality. From 2005 to 2006, facilities with a substandard quality of care went from 2.7 percent of all the homes to 4.4 percent. The percent of the homes putting their patients in double jeopardy went from 1 percent to 2 percent in the one year; and the average number of total deficiencies climbed from 4.4 percent of the facilities in 2005 to 5.3 percent in 2006. § The big, rich nursing home industry in Kentucky fights off reform efforts with piles of money members give their association political action committee. Word is they even give awards to the nursing home that chips in the most money. That money is used to fill the campaign coffers of legislators who cooperate with them. § Lexington is helping assisted living facilities and high-rise buildings for the elderly identify hazards and vulnerability in a disaster situation. § CMS – that’s the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services – is being told by an advisory commission not to give skilled nursing facilities another boost in Medicare reimbursement rates. The nursing home industry is all upset. But veteran watchers of the process said the industry will get an increase anyway in 2008. Industry lobbyists’ pockets in Washington are just too deep to be turned down. § SEIU (stands for Service Employees International Union) is forming a new union to be called SEIU Healthcare. You can be sure they will be going after the poorly paid front-line caregivers in many nursing homes. § Did you notice that in his State of the Commonwealth address Gov. Fletcher took credit for stopping what amounted to kicking people out of nursing homes? With a tough re-election race coming up, we could give him ideas on some other nursing home improvements he could make right now and then take credit for them, too.
RALLY, RALLY! The Kentucky Alzheimer’s Association is sponsoring an Alzheimer’s Advocacy Rally on Wed., Feb. 14 at 1 p.m. in the Capitol Rotunda in Frankfort. These are the people who are fighting hard for Alzheimer’s patients in nursing homes and elsewhere. Show your support by being there.
NOW ON OUR WEB SITE Many of you have told us you like this newsletter because it is short and the items are brief. There is so much information coming along every day about nursing home care, however, that we have designed a system to keep this newsletter as brief as possible, but still have all the news for you if you want it. Just go to our Web site, http://www.KyNursingHomeReform.org, and on the front page you will see NEWS NOTES. Under that will be the latest info on nursing homes we get. Like this month, go there to read:
MEMORIALIZE YOUR LOVED ONES KENTUCKIANS FOR NURSING HOME REFORM is now officially a non-profit organization. That means, for one thing, that any donations to the organization are tax deductible by the donor. With that in mind, we offer for your consideration the thought that memorials at the time of death of a loved one or friend could be in the form of donations to KENTUCKIANS FOR NURSING HOME REFORM, 1530 Nicholasville Road, Lexington, KY 40503.
P.S.
Two patients limp into
two different medical clinics with the same -- Thanks to my good friend, Larry Hopkins
THAT’S
IT FOR THIS TIME, BUT DON’T FORGET...
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