Nursing Home Week Highlights Challenges, Successes

HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s population is aging rapidly, and that means significant fiscal and social challenges need to be addressed to ensure residents continue to have access to the high-quality long-term services they need as they age, said Russ McDaid, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Pennsylvania Health Care Association (PHCA).

McDaid underscored the role Pennsylvania’s skilled nursing homes play in shoring up the state’s long-term care continuum during an appearance on a statewide public affairs TV program that begins airing this weekend. May is Older Americans Month and May 8-14 is Nursing Home Week.

“A lot of these monthly and weekly designations get overlooked, but they shouldn’t. They are excellent reminders of the obstacles our dedicated caregivers overcome daily in their continuous efforts to provide high quality care to nursing home residents,” McDaid said.

Each and every day, Pennsylvania’s 700-plus nursing homes provide high-quality, compassionate care to more than 81,000 frail elderly and disabled residents who need around-the-clock support for clinically complex medical conditions, including debilitating afflictions such as dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

Nursing homes today are more like hospitals, with the acuity (sickness) level of residents continuing to increase. The end result is higher operating costs for nursing homes — many of which serve residents who rely on Medicaid to help cover the costs of their care. Unfortunately, while long-term care costs have increased dramatically, funding for Medicaid residents has not kept pace.

Roughly two-thirds of all nursing home residents rely on Medicaid to pay for their care. However, the state reimburses nursing homes an average of $23 a day less per resident than the true cost of care. That shortfall has almost doubled since 2007, when it totaled $13.23 per resident per day. That means nursing homes on average lose about $8,500 annually for every Medicaid resident in their care.

A new independent study by Avalere Health, a respected Washington, D.C., research company focused on health care, reports that nursing homes have seen their margins drop by 28 percent between 2007 and 2014, from 3.2 percent to 2.3 percent. Those margins dip even lower, from 1.4 percent to 1.2 percent, for facilities where 75 percent or more of residents in care rely on Medicaid.

PHCA is seeking a 3.5 percent increase in the 2016-17 budget and continuation of a Medicaid access add-on for facilities that take care of the state’s most vulnerable residents.

“We need to think about how we’re going to ensure continued quality care for the rising number of older residents in Pennsylvania,” McDaid said. “The only way to do that is to ensure nursing homes receive the support they need to provide care to those who need this intense level of care. Many of our facilities simply can’t sustain services at the current rates.”

Despite these challenges, McDaid said Pennsylvanian nursing homes continue to rank among the best in the nation for the quality of care they provide. According to the latest federal 5-star rating system, a consumer tool, Pennsylvania nursing homes improved or stayed the same on all 11 quality measures and now rank better than the national average on 9 of the 11 measures. That’s an impressive fete.

Additional information about nursing home quality can be found at www.PaForQualityCare.org.

McDaid attributed much of the success to facilities’ caretakers. Pennsylvania’s nursing homes employ almost 30,000 nurses, who perform physically demanding and emotionally challenging jobs on behalf of residents and their families. National Nurses Week is also May 6-12, 2016.

“These men and women are the backbone of our long-term care system and deserve our highest praise and appreciation for the work they do,” McDaid said.

Despite the high-quality of care that nursing homes provide, many facilities have found themselves the target out of out-of-state predatory lawyers who are filing frivolous lawsuits seeking settlement payouts, because of the state’s lax tort laws related to long-term care.

McDaid said legislation (S.B. 747) is advancing to limit punitive damages against long-term care provides to 250 percent of the amount of compensatory damages for long-term care providers, giving them the same protections physicians have had in Pennsylvania since the passage of the MCARE law in 2002.

Nursing homes lose an average of $4.96 per day defending against mostly out-of-state predatory trial lawyers. Given that there are about 19.2 million days of care paid for by the commonwealth’s Medicaid program, $95 million was spent on liability related costs in Pennsylvania nursing homes in 2014.

“Pennsylvania Newsmakers” is one of the state’s premier politics and public policy television talk shows. The show is available at www.phca.org and will air regionally:

• WGAL Channel 8 (Harrisburg and Lancaster) Sunday, May 8 at 7:30 a.m.
• WBPH (Lehigh Valley and Philadelphia) Monday, May 9 at 8:30 p.m.
• WKBS 47 (Altoona) Saturday, May 14 at 9:30 a.m.
• WPCB 40 (Pittsburgh) Saturday, May 14 at 9:30 a.m.