Tim Rogers posted on October 13, 2009 20:01
As part of a new Medicaid Program twenty-nine states are moving people out of Nursing Homes and into Home Care. A recent article in the New York Times about Walter Brown – a former Nursing Home patient – explains how the program works.
Mr. Brown, who lives in Philadelphia, had a stroke two years ago and went into a Nursing Home.
“It was,” he told the Times, “like being in jail.”
Now he’s out.
Because Pennsylvania – as part of the new program – is “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.”
For years the Times reports, “Medicaid practically steered people into nursing homes.”
“Medicaid,” says Gene Coffey, an attorney with the non-profit National Senior Citizens Law Center, “has had an institutional bias in favor of nursing homes. Federal law requires states to provide nursing home services. But not home or community based services.”
But, now, Pennsylvania is moving patients like Mr. Brown out of Nursing Homes and back into their own homes, where they receive Home Care.
The final savings aren’t clear but a recent study by the University of California found home care costs taxpayers $44,000 a year less than nursing home care.
North Carolina policy still tilts toward sending patients to Nursing Homes – but wouldn’t it be a pleasant change to open the newspaper and read a story like this, where a patient left a Nursing Home and returned to his own home. It could cut health care costs. And make patients – like Mr. Brown – happier.