Tag Archives for Nursing facility

Palliative Care Can Provide Comfort to Dying Residents

Published in Woonsocket Call on May 10, 2015

           A recently published study, by Brown University researchers, takes a look at end-of-life care in America’s nursing facilities, seeking to answer the question, is knowledge and access to information on palliative associated with a reduced likelihood of aggressive end-of-life treatment?

Brown researchers say when a nursing facility resident is dying, oftentimes aggressive interventions like inserting a feeding tube or sending the patient to the emergency room can futilely worsen, rather than relieve, their distress. While palliative care can pull resources together in a facility to provide comfort at the end of a resident’s life, the knowledge of it varies among nursing directors.  A new large national study found that the more nursing directors knew about palliative care, the lower the likelihood that their patients would experience aggressive end-of-life care.

Susan C. Miller, professor (research) of health services, policy and practice in the Brown University School of Public Health and lead author of the study in the Journal of Palliative Medicine, published March 16, 2015, worked with colleagues to survey nursing directors at more than 1,900 nursing facilities across the nation between July 2009 and June 2010.  The researchers hoped to learn more about their knowledge of palliative care and their facility’s implementation of key palliative care practices.

Knowledge Is Power

According to the findings of the Brown study, the first nationally representative sample of palliative care familiarity at nursing homes, more than one in five of the surveyed directors had little or no basic palliative care knowledge, although 43 percent were fully versed.

“While the Institute of Medicine has called for greater access to skilled palliative care across settings, the fact that one in five U.S. nursing home directors of nursing had very limited palliative care knowledge demonstrates the magnitude of the challenge in many nursing homes,” Miller said. “Improvement is needed as are efforts to facilitate this improvement, including increased Medicare/Medicaid surveyor oversight of nursing home palliative care and quality indicators reflecting provision of high-quality palliative care,” she said, noting that besides quizzing the directors the researchers also analyzed Medicare data on the 58,876 residents who died during the period to identify the type of treatments they experienced when they were dying.

When researchers analyzed palliative care knowledge together with treatment at end of life, they found that the more directors knew about basic palliative care, the lower likelihood that nursing facility residents would experience feeding tube insertion, injections, restraints, suctioning, and emergency room or other hospital trips. Meanwhile, residents in higher-knowledge facilities also had a higher likelihood of having a documented six-month prognosis.

The study shows only an association between palliative care knowledge and less aggressive end-of-life care, the authors say, noting that knowledge leads to improved care, but it could also be that at nursing facilities with better care in general, there is also greater knowledge.  But if there is a causal relationship, then it could benefit thousands of nursing facilities residents every year for their nursing home caregivers to learn more about palliative care, the authors conclude.

Progress in Providing End-of-Life Care

Virginia M. Burke, J.D. President and CEO of the non-profit Rhode Island Health Care Association, said, “We were gratified that the authors found that most of the nursing directors who responded to their survey gave correct answers on all (43% of respondents) or most (36%of respondents) of the “knowledge” questions on palliative care.  We were also gratified to see that the number of hospitalizations during the last thirty days of life has declined significantly over the past ten years, as has the number of individuals who receive tube feedings during their last thirty days.  The need for continued progress is clear.”

Burke, representing three-quarters of Rhode Island’s skilled nursing and rehabilitation centers, adds, “It is not at all surprising that greater understanding of palliative care leads to better application of palliative care.”

The states’s nursing facilities are committed to providing person-centered end of life care, says Burke, noting that according to the National Palliative Care Research Center, Rhode Island’s hospitals are among the top performers for palliative care.  “We suspect that our state’s nursing facilities are as well.  We would be very interested in state specific results in order to see any areas where we can improve.”

Says spokesperson Director Michael Raia, of Rhode Island’s Health & Human Services Agency, “We need to provide the right care in the right place at the right time for all patients.”

When it comes to nursing facilities, Raia calls for reversing the payment incentives so that facilities are rewarded for providing better quality care and having better patient outcomes.  He notes that the Reinventing Medicaid Act of 2015 reinvests nursing home reimbursement rate savings into newly created incentive pools for nursing homes and long-term care providers that reward facilities for providing better quality care, including higher quality palliative care.

Bringing Resources to Families

With caregiving one of AARP’s most important issues, it’s no surprise that the organization provides a great deal of guidance on palliative care, stressing that “it involves organizations and professionals coming together to meet a person’s needs both in terms of pain management, along with emotional and spiritual perspectives,” said AARP State Director Kathleen Connell.

Connell says that “It’s is truly a team effort in which nursing home staff become key players. The resources are important to patient with chronic and terminal issues. Their families need help, too. So it is important any time we learn more about ways we can address this very important healthcare need.”

Adds Connell, “In Rhode Island, I’m confident that we have nursing homes that are dedicated to easing the difficulty of this particularly stressful stage of life. They give patients and their families enormous comfort. We certainly applaud their compassion and hope the report is helpful anywhere it identifies a need for improvement,” adds Connell.

AARP’s Caregiving Resource Center (http://www.aarp.org/home-family/caregiving/) includes an End of Life section. Check out a specific palliative care resource at  http://assets.aarp.org/external_sites/caregiving/multimedia/EG_PalliativeCare.html

To read the Brown Palliative Care Study go to http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/jpm.2014.0393.

Herb Weiss, LRI ’12 is a Pawtucket writer covering aging, health care and medical issues.  He can be reached at hweissri@aol.com.

Aging Advocates Call for Override of Governor’s Veto

Published in Pawtucket Times on July 14, 2003

The General Assembly is poised to override  Gov. Don Carcieri’s veto Tuesday.

The political rhetoric has intensified as the governor picks apart the 2004 budget, which was recently passed by the Democratic-controlled legislature, forcing Democratic Majority Leader William J. Murphy and Senate President William V. Irons to explain how they shaped the budget.

Carcieri has called the General Assembly’s 2004 budget flawed because lawmakers have “missed opportunities” to stop the legislature’s habit of deficit spending.

The governor’s media blitz, beginning last week, is intended to build support for his efforts to defeat the legislature’s attempt to override his veto. Carcieri has called for the elimination of subsidies for greyhound kennel owners [also supported by this writer] and the reining in public-employee personnel costs.

Carcieri also opposes the spending of $ 52 million in federal Medicaid expenditure relief funds and the one percent restaurant sales tax.

When the dust settles after Tuesday’s legislative session to override Carcieri’s veto, aging advocates hope for an override. The 2004 budget crafted by the Democratic-controlled General Assembly puts increased state funding into senior programs and services.  Both provider groups and senior advocacy groups expressed disappointment when Carcieri’s budget proposal did not allocate funding for new aging-related initiatives. Moreover, his fiscal blueprint for state spending made cuts to existing senior programs and services.

“Once again, senior advocates have looked to the General Assembly to provide essential programs and services for the state’s growing senior population,” says Susan Sweet, a long-time aging advocate and consultant to nonprofit groups who also serves as a consumer representative to the state’s Long-Term Care Coordinating Council.

“We have not been disappointed,” Sweet said, in reference to the passage of the General Assembly’s 2004 budget.  “It’s sad that the Carcieri administration does not recognize the improvements the General Assembly has made to the budget and the lives of older Rhode Islander.”

Joan Crawley, executive director of Pawtucket’s Leon Mathieu Senior Center, added, “Although I can appreciate Carcieri’s frustration with trying to balance the state budget, as a senior advocate, I applaud the legislators for making the very difficult decision to fund legislative grants on behalf of the state’s  senior centers,” she said.

“At the Pawtucket town meeting, gubernatorial candidate Carcieri assured us that seniors would be a top priority of his administration should he be elected governor. He even distributed a brochure outlining his senior initiatives. So far, he has failed to address any of those initiatives in is budget, Crawley says.

So, what’s in the General Assembly’s 2004 budget that will improve the quality of life of Rhode Island seniors?

The budget will allocate new state funds totaling $ 300,000 to pay for nursing facility care of legal immigrant Rhode Island seniors who are not eligible for Medicaid.

The budget will also allocate $ 50,000 to support the efforts of the Ocean State Adult Immunization Coalition to get the word out about the importance of seniors getting influenza and pneumococcal vaccinations.

Meanwhile, lawmakers have allocated state monies for community grants. Initially, senior centers (in Carcieri’s budget ) were targeted with a 10 precent cut. To the relief of senior center providers, lawmakers passed the 2004 budget with no cuts

As previously reported to All About Seniors, an 18-month study by B.D.O. Seidman, a consulting firm hired by the state Department of Human Services, found Rhode Island was underpaying its nursing facilities in excess of $ 30 million annually.

It seems that the Rhode Island General Assembly agrees with the report’s assessment, because lawmakers made a partial allocation of new Medicaid dollars to overhaul the state’s ailing Medicaid system.

With passage of the budget, nursing facilities will receive a total of $ 18.8 million in state and federal dollars – a three-year phase-in will bring the total federal and state dollars up to $ 30 million.

Finally, the recently passed 2004 state budget has allocated $ 50,000 to provide dental services to nursing facility residents.

The 2003 budget that was supposed to expire June 30 stays in effect until Carcieri signs the 2004 budget into law. Until that time, new programs, policies, or program appropriations will be effectively put on hold.

An override of Carcieri’s veto will result in many new senior programs and services being funded in the 2004 state budget.

If the popular Republican governor is able to rally is troops – both Republican lawmakers and Carcieri Democrats – to support his veto, then lawmakers must begin their efforts to hammer out another budget.

….

As noted in last week’s All About Seniors column, not one dime in state funding was allocated in the state’s 2004 budget to beef up the state Department of Health’s regulatory oversight. Providers, aging advocates, and even state officials have called for new state dollars to fill one full-time surveyor position (a nurse) to ensure that assisted living residences across Rhode Island are inspected on a timelier basis.

The General Assembly has put laws on the books to protect frail Rhode Island seniors who received assisted-living services. Yet, Carcieri and lawmakers have failed to allocate the necessary funding in the 2004 state budget to allow Health Department regulators to comply with    their legislative oversight duties to inspect the state’s 72 assisted-living facilities and 155 assisted-living bed in nursing facilities on a timely basis.

That’s not all.  According to the state’s Department of Health, another seven assisted-living projects are expected to be up and running over the next 18 months.

Meanwhile, at Tuesday’s veto override, lawmakers will also take up legislative issues were not addressed in their haste to adjourn two weeks ago.  Maybe the state Health Department’s urgent need for more funding to adequately perform its oversight duties of assisted-living facilities will be acted on by lawmakers in both chambers.

Carcieri can become the white knight and save the day. He can choose to move forward and fix this policy flaw by either using contingency funds in his office budget or to take administrative action to hire one more full-time assisted living inspector.

Acting decisively to fix tis identified policy glitch is sound public policy that will ultimately protect the health and well-being of 1,700 assisted-living residents. Even with Carcieri’s calls for balancing the budget, taxpayers especially seniors won’t oppose allocated tax dollars to protect older Rhode Islander.

Statehouse Rally Calls for Passage of Nursing Home Payment Reforms

Published in Pawtucket Times on June 9, 2003

In the final days of this year’s legislative session, the Coalition to Ensure Funding for Quality Long-Term Care rallied its troops at the Statehouse rotunda to push for the passage of two legislative proposals that would fix an ailing Medicaid reimbursement system.

The goal of last Wednesday’s rally was to keep the Coalition’s two legislative proposals on the radar map of the Rhode Island General Assembly, which has been bogged down with a multitude of heated legislative issues – separation of powers , fire code changes, smoking bans in restaurants to name a few.

Even with an expected $ 225 million budget deficit for fiscal year 2004, the long-term care advocates, including provider groups, consumer advocates, state policy makers and legislators, urged lawmakers to pay a fair Medicaid rate for nursing facilities, required by state and federal law to provide quality of care to 9,000-plus vulnerable Rhode Island seniors who need intensive, 24-hour-a-day care.

Rally supporters gave a thumbs-up to two legislative proposals ( H 5803/ S 0899). The companion bills, if enacted would revise the state’s Principles of address the inadequate funding of the state’s nursing facilities.

The two legislative proposals, still in the House and Senate Financial Committee, reflected the findings of an 18-month study of B.D.O. Seidman, a consulting firm hired by the state Department of Human Resources to re view and recommend fixes to the state’s flawed reimbursement system.

A major finding of this state-financed study found that the state was underpaying facilities in excess of $ 29 million annually.

These bills call for an additional $ 14 million to state funding for Medicaid reimbursement to nursing facilities. With the infusion of state dollars, the federal government would then kick in $ 16 million for a total increase of $ 30 million.

Eighty percent of the state’s nursing facility residents rely on the Medicaid program to pay for their care, John Gage, administrator of the Coventry-based Riverview Health Care Community and a Coalition member, told those who intended the rally.

Many facilities are left struggling to remain open because Medicaid does not pay for the actual cost of care, he said, noting a number of Ocean State nursing facilities have already filed for bankruptcy of receivership, and some are even closing their doors.

An inadequate reimbursement rate continues to fuel Rhode Island’s critical nursing shortage, too, said Gage. Due to the current  reimbursement system, facilities are hard-pressed to come up with the necessary funds for increases in salaries and benefits to retain nursing staff.

Lt. Gov. Charles Fogarty, who chairs the state’s Long-Term Care Coordinating Council, warned the crowd that Rhode Island’s nursing home industry “is on verge of a meltdown.”

He- along with Sen. Stephen D. Alves (D-West Warwick) and Rep. Steven M. Costantino (D-Providence), sponsors of the Coalition’s nursing home payment reform bills – urged Gov. Donald Carcieri and House and Senate leaders to include funding in the fiscal year 2004 budget to begin the steps needed for Medicaid reform.

Throughout the afternoon rally, until 6:00 p.ml, the Coalition gathered hundreds of signatures to support efforts to increased Medicaid reimbursement to nursing facilities.

Meanwhile, posters strategy placed outside the House and Senate chambers illustrated the rally supporters point that the state is not paying enough for care  of family members in nursing facilities.

At one poster site, piles of dirt were placed on a 6-foot table.  A  poster said: “Did you know this mulch topsoil costs more than $ 5.63 – that’s more than the Medicaid system’s pay for an hour’s worth of nursing facility care for your loved one.  Isn’t your grandmother’s care worth more than the cost of a pile of dirt.”

In a previous All About Seniors column, this writer called for lawmakers to fix the state’s flawed Medicaid reimbursement system once and for all.

The legislative session will soon be ending, and immediate action must be taken now by lawmakers to pass the Coalition’s two legislative proposal, with Gov. Carcieri hopefully signing the bills into laws.

State policy makers must no longer use a Band-Aid approach to fix  broken Medicaid payment system, especially with the graying of the Ocean State’s population. A growing number of Rhode Islanders will soon require this level of intensive care.

It’s time for lawmakers to ratchet up the Medicaid rates to pay for actual costs of care, allowing facilities to deliver quality services.