Changing Aging

Posted in the Minneapolis Star Tribune

Start transforming nursing homes into service centers.  The day is coming when advanced aging will no longer mean leaving home for  most Minnesotans. For many, it will lead to the installation of electronic sensors  in their homes. High-tech monitors will alert family members or care supervisors  when a refrigerator isn’t opened often enough, a bathroom is visited too often,  medicine is not consumed or movement is not detected.

Some of what Minnesotans now call nursing homes will be “older adult service  centers” that monitor those readouts, offer drop-in care and clinics, host classes  and events, and dispatch providers of in-home services. Others will be “life care  communities” that offer a variety of residential options for the chronically ill and  disabled.

The Legislature should seek to hasten the arrival of that future. When it does,  Minnesota’s frail elderly will have more of the independence they want, and their  care will be less burdensome to taxpayers. State and federal taxpayers foot the  bill for about two-thirds of Minnesota nursing home residents; those tabs are  running in the range of $50,000 per year.

The transformation of elder care would be spurred by enactment this session of a  bill sponsored by state Rep. Joe Atkins, DFL-Inver Grove Heights, offering  income tax credits for installation of electronic “senior sensors.” Lawmakers  should also explore ways to encourage the purchase of long-term care insurance  and to allow a Medicaid-eligible senior to use those funds to pay a friend or  relative to provide home care.

But until the good day comes when few frail seniors need to leave home for care,  the Legislature must also attend to the condition of Minnesota nursing homes.  They are hurting: Minnesota has lost 10 percent of its nursing facilities to  financial failure since 2000, and one of every four remaining is considered by  industry associations at risk of closure.

State underfunding and hyper-regulation are major reasons why. Nursing homes  can’t raise rates without state approval. No approval came for 2004-05, and the  2006-07 increase didn’t keep pace with inflation.

Industry representatives are asking the Legislature for catch-up funding for fiscal  2008 and keep-up money for 2009, totaling $64 million. That’s more than three  times the increase Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s budget allots for long-term care, and  likely more than the DFL-controlled Legislature can muster. But legislators will be  derelict in their duty if they turn their backs completely on the facilities’ pleas.  What’s more, they’ll do a disservice to tomorrow’s seniors if they spurn the  industry’s request for $10 million a year to help underwrite the projects that will  turn nursing homes into older adult service centers.

A recent poll of Minnesota baby boomers by Ecumen, the state’s largest nonprofit  provider of eldercare, found that they have no desire to end their days in nursing  homes. Forward-looking state investments are needed now to make sure they  won’t have to.