Get them out.

More than a year after Connecticut received a multimillion dollar federal grant, a select number of elderly and disabled residents are expected to move out of institutions and into homes starting in May.

Last January, Connecticut was awarded $24.2 million to fund a pilot program called Money Follows the Person. The idea is to let people who need long-term care choose where they want to live, in a nursing home or other facility or with family and friends, and receive equal Medicaid funding with either option.

Currently, it costs Medicaid twice as much to care for an individual in a nursing home as it does at home, according to estimates from the Department of Social Services. But in Connecticut, only a third of Medicaid long-term care expenditures are spent on community-based services, according to the June 2007 “Connecticut Long-Term Care Needs Assessment Study,” which was conducted by the UConn Health Center. The remainder is spent on institutional care.

It seems to me that if it costs so much less to keep the elderly and disabled out of the nursing home, lets put a lot more effort into bringing these people back home.

One of the big problems with all of this is the nursing home industry lobby. They fight these alternatives and usually win.

Tennesseans can expect the nursing home industry to fight back or try to distract the state from such logical alternatives. Nursing-home officials are already suggesting the alternative-care concept is ripe for abuse. In fact, the industry’s legislative motivation appears to be focused more on caps on liability from lawsuits. This comes as officials have begun to crack down substantially on violations found in nursing homes. Many people have pointed out how painful it has been for families whose loved ones are displaced by crackdowns that lead to government funds being pulled. The displacement of nursing-home residents has certainly been unfortunate, and the state probably could have handled the crackdown better, but the bottom line is, violations have been found. The industry should work on compliance.

Does one ever get the feeling the “industry” is concerned only about money? We should get that feeling. Because it is all they care about; and don’t ever be fooled that the money goes to good care because it doesn’t. It goes into the bank accounts of owners and share holders. CNA’s, at least, never see the benefits of the so called industry; and, any CNA will tell anyone who asks neither to the residents.

Continuing on the theme of online resources for CNA’s, Patti gathered several links to sites that offer continuing education opportunities. These are not free and pricing is a bit prohibitive for individual CNA’s. Facilities can certainly afford some of this though.

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Here’s a perception we need to consider A LOT more. This was written by a CNA who is a member of the Yahoo Nursing Assistants email group. I suggest every CNA and anyone else who reads this to stop…think…and relate. What can you do to change the way you work to prevent these perceptions? I suspect many of our voiceless residents will agree with this.

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In the course of any given shift at work, CNA’s come across words and abbreviations and diseases and conditions we have never heard of before. There are hundreds of terms to learn. In this article we hope to make this task a little easier.

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Tennessee lawmakers are writing legislation aimed to cap malpractice suit awards.

Highlights of the legislation, introduced today by state Sen. Jim Tracy (R-Shelbyville) and state Rep. Randy Rinks (D-Savannah), include the following:

– It places health services provided by nursing homes under the same guidelines as medical malpractice cases. Attorneys’ fees in cases involving doctors and hospitals have limits while such fees involving nursing home litigation do not.

– It allows nursing homes to require an arbitration agreement for each patient entering a nursing home. The provision would not affect patients already in nursing homes.

– While it does not place limits on economic damages that can be claimed in nursing home liability cases, it does place a limit on non-economic damages. That limit would be in line with laws currently on the books for workers’ compensation cases. It also allows punitive damages of double the amount of the non-economic losses.

“There was almost a billion dollars spent on nursing home care last year, and about 93 percent of that was borne by taxpayers as services were delivered through TennCare and Medicare,” Flatt said. “This means that all taxpayers have a stake in seeing these soaring liability claims brought under control.

“Good nursing homes are having to be sold in Tennessee, and that trend will continue if this problem is not addressed,” he said. “Florida saw 123 of its nursing homes sold between 2000 and 2002 before its legislature took action to solve the problem. We need to avoid that happening here.”

“Too many health care dollars and too much time are being spent on lawsuits and litigation and diverted from providing care,” said Jim Smith, president and CEO of Tennessee Health Management, Inc., another multifacility Tennessee provider.

There is an ever growing list of state Direct Care Giver advocacy sites. CNA’s are considered direct care givers. Here’s a few:

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The Dept. of Veterans Affairs has an excellent online tool kit for a FALLS PREVENTION program. It’s available for free, and full of good ideas. CNA’s are a vital part of their program!

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From Setting The Nursing Home On Fire:

Nordstrom’s is a chain of upscale department stores famous for their customer service. They only have one rule for employees: “Use your best judgment”.
[…]
Residents would be able to participate in the activities of their choosing, and it wouldn’t just be groups like church and bingo. Nurses wouldn’t have superfluous charting, aides wouldn’t be assigned useless tasks like putting ice in water pitchers that everyone knows are never drank out of. Aides would pretty much run the place, in fact, and nobody would have a problem with it.

Indeed.