February 9, 2009
NEWSLETTER
A non-profit organization dedicated to the welfare of the “Forgotten Kentuckians”
PROPOSED LAW WOULD REQUIRE POSTING QUALITY RATING IN EVERY NURSING HOME
Rep. Carl Rollins II, D-Midway—, has introduced House Bill 318 that would require nursing homes in Kentucky to post a sign showing how they are rated by the new federal Five-Star Rating System. The rating would have to be posted within 10 feet of the front reception desk and in a prominent place easily seen by residents, employees and visitors.
A nursing home can get up to five stars which means it is “much above average” or down to one star which means it is “much below average.” Ratings for all the nursing homes in the nation accepting Medicare and/or Medicaid patients are rated in the new system. The ratings can be found by going online to http://www.Medicare.gov/NHCompare.
In the current rankings, 23 percent of the 287 nursing homes in Kentucky have one star; while 10 percent have five stars. There are rankings in between – two stars (below average), three stars (average), and four stars (above average).
Advocates for nursing home reform have hailed the new system as an important tool for consumers to have when choosing a nursing home. The nursing home industry has been critical of the system, saying that it is based on flawed data from what they consider an outdated nursing home inspection system.
In actuality, the new system gives a pretty good indication of the quality of care in a facility at the time of the rating. A nursing home’s rating is based not only on the results of annual inspections of the nursing home, but also on staffing and 10 quality measures, such as how many residents have high-risk pressure ulcers.
Advocates for nursing home reform are now urging the federal government to refine the new system. For example, the staffing ratings are based on information provided by the nursing home that is not audited. Advocates want staffing data to be based on actual payroll records.
Consumer are also urged to use not only the new ratings but also investigate each facility they are considering by visiting it and asking questions.
If the proposed legislation passes, Kentucky could be come the first state in the nation requiring nursing homes to post their ratings. A bill requiring posting of the ratings also has been introduced in the California legislature.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
House Bill 318 will be sent to a committee this week and with the short session it will be imperative for getting it out of committee and on to the floor of the House for a vote and then on to the Senate for a vote. We will be keeping you informed about the status of this important bill, and asking you to call legislators to ask them to vote for it. Stay tuned.
A RESOLUTION TO SHOW YOUR COLORS
Legislators can stand up to show their colors on supporting quality care in nursing homes by voting for a joint resolution, HJR 94, just introduced by Rep. David Osborne, R-Prospect. The resolution asks lawmakers to formally declare that “quality of care and dignity of residents (in nursing homes) are a priority in the Commonwealth.” Rep. Osborne said he introduced the resolution at the suggestion of one of his constituents, Sherry Cooke, who is a former member of the board of Kentuckians for Nursing Home Reform and now a leader in a new nursing home advocacy organization. Rep. Tom Burch, D-Louisville, is a co-sponsor of the resolution. Rep. Burch is also a longtime supporter of nursing home reform and chairman of the House Health and Welfare Committee.
WHAT ABOUT A STAFFING BILL?
For those of you who have asked us, “No, we will not try to get a bill on quality staffing standards passed in this session of the state legislature.” Why? We just think this session is too short to get such a complicated measure through, based on our experiences in past legislative sessions. But don’t worry. We are not giving up because we feel more strongly than ever before that setting quality staffing standards for nursing homes is of No. 1 importance. Let’s just say that at this point we are “re-loading.”
STATE BUDGET: ARE WE WORRIED?
In a word, YES. Medicaid pays for the care of most residents in Kentucky nursing homes. The state puts in 30 percent and the feds match with the other 70 percent to take care of a nursing home resident who qualifies for Medicaid. But the state reports that right now there is a $231.8 million deficit in Medicaid funding. The state’s part of that is $69.5 million. The bad news is that Gov. Steve Beshear says that there is a projected revenue shortfall of $456 million in the state fiscal year ending June 30. The governor is out there now looking for more money and cutting state programs left and right to make up for the deficit. He also wants to get more revenue from a 70-cent-per-pack tax on cigarettes. The good news so far for nursing home residents is that the governor has exempted Medicaid from any cuts. And up in Washington, where work is feverishly going on to stimulate the economy, there are proposals to send additional funding to the states to hold up Medicaid programs.
Among those proposed cuts, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services is looking at an $18.6 million hit – including a cut of more than $1.7 million in the programs of the Department of Aging and Independent Living. One of those cuts there would eliminate the Aging & Disability Resource Markets program for the remainder of the fiscal year.
Keep a close watch on all this, however. The bleeding seems to get worse almost every week, and reports are that the legislature will act this week to authorize both new revenue sources and cuts in services.
IMPROVING THE OMBUDSMAN PROGRAM
A appropriation request before the Congress would authorize funding for about 300 more nursing home ombudsmen nationwide with the objective of having at least one ombudsman for every 2,000 nursing home residents.
SHORT STUFF
- The new Kentucky House Speaker Rep.Greg Stumbo was very friendly to nursing home reform when he was attorney general. In fact, he produced a very popular booklet, “How to Protect Nursing Home Residents – A Guide for Taking Action Against Abuse and Neglect,” and thousands of copies have been distributed statewide. Kentuckians for Nursing Home Reform helped write the booklet. Speaker Stumbo also kept Rep. Tom Burch (D-Louisville) as chairman of the House Health and Welfare Committee.
- Kerry Weems, the man who pushed through the new Five-Star Rating System for nursing homes, and a hero to many advocates for nursing home reform, has reportedly left his position as head of CMS – the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Mr. Weems was a Bush administration appointee who vowed to get the new rating system started, and did, before being pushed out by a new administration. He is a career employee of the federal health service, and in the opinion of one Washington insider, “…. very marketable after running Medicare and Medicaid.” Kentuckians for Nursing Home Reform tried to reach Mr. Weems to thank him for his good work, but he did not return the call.
- Always good for an excuse, the big nursing home lobbying organization, blamed the federal-state inspection system when a survey found that 87.6 percent of them had deficiencies in the past year. The Courier-Journal in Louisville wasn’t buying that excuse, however. Each nursing home resident, the C-J said in an editorial, “is a vulnerable human being, deserving of conscientious and compassionate care….” In other words, not excuses.
- According to the Government Accountability Office, if the stimulus package currently being debated in the Congress goes through, Kentucky would receive $1.102 billion extra for the Medicaid program by the first quarter of 2011 The major portion of Medicaid goes for supporting residents of nursing homes.
- Two top nursing home ombudsmen are retiring. Kathy Gannoe, who headed the Lexington office and built the Nursing Home Ombudsman Agency of the Bluegrass into one of the best in the nation, is retiring after 25 years. She reportedly will be replaced by Sherry Culp who is now the assistant director of that office. And Ruth Morgan retires after 20 years as district ombudsman serving 10 counties in the Bowling Green area. She has been replaced by Teresa Whitaker.
- There is a new senior living referral service in Louisville called Home to Home that gives free, personal assistance to seniors and their families in search of assisted living, Alzheimer’s care and retirement communities. The service charges the facility when it places someone. Contact Sharon Bohnert in Louisville at (502) 895-3900.
- Sarah F. Wells who was with Women In Government for 10 years has been named the new executive director of the National Citizens’ Coalition for Nursing Home Reform (NCCNHR) in Washington, D.C. Ms. Wells succeeds Alice Hedt and is on the job now.
- Keith Knapp has been named chief executive officer of the Christian Care Communities in Kentucky. Mr. Knapp was formerly administrator for the Episcopal Church Home in Louisville. Recently he has been involved in developing a new nursing home in Woodford County using the innovative Green House concept. The developers hope to have a site by Easter, Mr. Knapp told us recently.
- A new scholarship to encourage the training of competent, compassionate caregivers for the elderly has been set up by the children of the late Loren Richards. The children — Janice Richards, Wanda Delaplane and Phillip Richards — won a big lawsuit against a nursing home in Frankfort where Loren Richards was a resident. The scholarship is worth $4,000 a year, and the first recipient of it is Jocelyn Hohman of Elizabethtown, a student in social work at Western Kentucky University. Ms. Richards is a member of the board of Kentuckians for Nursing Home Reform. For more information on the scholarship, call the Blue Grass Community Foundation in Lexington at (859) 225-3343.
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“It’s like a Good Housekeeping seal of approval.”
HAVING OUR SAY…..
One of the saddest things is seeing a nursing home closed down and the residents forced to move. I have witnessed this and it is a pitiful sight. But it doesn’t have to happen.
Right now there are two or three nursing homes in Kentucky on the verge of being shut down. They deserve it because they have not treated their residents well, in fact in some cases they have neglected and abused them. We don’t want our loved ones getting such poor care, and we are glad the state inspection system has caught the perpetrators.
But let’s penalize the nursing home owners and operators. Let’s not harm the residents who live there in the process.
We propose a simple solution. The state should send in a team of nursing home professionals, whom they hire, to run a facility being closed down the right way and get it back in compliance. This is what was done at Oakwood, the facility for mentally retarded in Somerset,
Funding could come from the Civil Monetary Penalties Fund (CMP) which right now has some $5 million in it. State officials say the fund can be used to pay the cost of moving residents out. Why not let the residents stay, and let the fund pay for a team to come in and get the facility back into compliance?
Gov. Steve Beshear, who has had his hands full handling state reaction to a terrible winter storm, and now a serious state budget shortfall, should jump into the nursing home mess and issue an executive order to keep people in nursing homes that are about to be shut down — and come down hard on the owners and operators who cause the problem in the first place.
— Bernie Vonderheide
MEMORIALIZE YOUR LOVED ONES
KENTUCKIANS FOR NURSING HOME REFORM is a non-profit organization. That means 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 the passing 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.
“Why did the Chicken Cross the Road?”
Answers from Famous People...
PRESIDENT OBAMA: That chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the other side of the road.
HILLARY CLINTON: When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure - right from Day One! - that every chicken in this country gets the chance it deserves to cross the road. But then, this really isn't about me.
FORMER PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here.
FORMER VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Where's my gun?
COLIN POWELL: Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite image of the chicken crossing the road.
FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: I did not cross the road with that chicken. What is your definition of chicken?
FORMER VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE: I invented the chicken.
JOHN KERRY: Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken's intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against it.
AL SHARPTON: Why are all the chickens white? We need some black chickens.
DR. PHIL: The problem we have here is that this chicken won't realize that he must first deal with the problem on this side of the road before it goes after the problem on the other side of the road... What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he's acting by not taking on his current problems before adding new problems.
OPRAH: Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.
NANCY GRACE: That chicken crossed the road because he's guilty! You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks.
MARTHA STEWART: No one called me to warn me which way that chicken was going. I had a standing order at the Farmer's Market to sell my eggs when the price dropped to a certain level. No little bird gave me any insider information.
DR SEUSS: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Did he cross it with a hare? Did he cross it with a bear? Did he check if the road was hot? I kinda doubt it, I think not! Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed, I've not been told. Just one more thing I have to say, it's been bugging me to this very day. If the Chicken is a she, why do we keep saying HE?
ERNEST HEMINGWAY: To die in the rain, alone.
JERRY FALWELL: Because the chicken was gay! Can't you people see the plain truth? That's why they call it the 'other side.' Yes, my friends, that chicken is gay. And if you eat that chicken, you will become gay, too. I say we boycott all chickens until we sort out this abomination that the liberal media whitewashes with seemingly harmless phrases like 'the other side.' That chicken should not be crossing the road. It's as plain and as simple as that.
GRANDPA: In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough.
BARBARA WALTERS: Isn't that interesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart warming story of how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish its lifelong dream of crossing the road.
ARISTOTLE: It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.
JOHN LENNON: Imagine all the chickens in the world crossing roads together, in peace.
BILL GATES: I have just released eChicken2008, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your checkbook. Internet Explorer is an integral part of eChicken2008. This new platform is much more stable and will never cra.#@&&^(C%..........reboot.
ALBERT EINSTEIN: Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?
COLONEL SANDERS: Did I miss one?
— Thanks to my friend, Brenda Pezzarossi