The New York Times posted an article about the benefits of moving nursing home residents back into their homes, and how this truly benefits them…and how it’s a real threat to the industry.

“It was like being in jail,” Mr. Brown said on a recent afternoon. “In the nursing home you’ve got to do what they say when they say it, go to bed when they tell you, eat what they want you to eat. The food was terrible.”

But recently state workers helped Mr. Brown find a two-bedroom apartment in public housing here, which he shares with his daughter. “It just makes me more relaxed, more confident in myself,” he said, speaking with some difficulty, but with a broad smile. “More confident in the future.”

A growing number of states are reaching out to people like Mr. Brown, who have been in nursing homes for more than six months, aiming to disprove the notion that once people have settled into a nursing home, they will be there forever. Since 2007, Medicaid has teamed up with 29 states to finance such programs, enabling the low-income elderly and people with disabilities to receive many services in their own homes.

The nursing home industry is fighting these ideas, in order to keep their doors open. By empowering residents to go back into their communities these states are finding out that people come first and it’s not nearly as expensive as some like us to think.

“Medicaid has had an institutional bias in favor of nursing homes,” even for people who do not need them, said Gene Coffey, a staff lawyer at the nonprofit National Senior Citizens Law Center. “Federal law requires states to provide nursing home services. They don’t have to provide home or community-based services.”

I think this bias lives on due to the herd belief: It’s cheaper, easier and more managable to keep lots of people together in one building (institution). They use safety as an excuse, often…but does that really justify taking away a person’s independence? I don’t think so- not for those who can think for themselves and who can get by with a little help.