U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging Ponders Future of Long Term Care

On April 18, Senator Herb Kohl Chairman of the U.S. Senate Special Commmittee on Aging convened a hearing to consider how best provide and finance long-term care services and supports (LTSS) for millions of Americans. In his opening remarks, Sen. Kohl recited sobering statistics: current cost for LTSS is more than $300 billion a year and Medicaid alone projects $1.9 trillion in costs over the next 10 years with an annual average increase increase of 6.6%. He noted that America is going to have to do more with less: finding more efficient ways to provide care because (Federal and state) money will not be there.

Two themes emerged from the testimony given by a distinguished panel of experts: innovation is critical to expanding the capacity and efficacy of the LTSS infrastructure, yet encumbered by the Medicaid program’s exclusive reliance on skilled nursing care (by design), and secondly, stakeholders are uncertain as to how to encourage Americans to take responsibility for funding their future long term care needs.

Full Article and Source:
U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging Ponders Future of Long Term Care

Why Aren’t the Feds Doing More to Stop Financial Fraud of Seniors?

Last year, the actor Mickey Rooney testified before the Senate’s Special Committee on Aging regarding the abuse, neglect, and financial exploitation of seniors. He spoke from personal experience, and his words were heartfelt and tragic. He said:

Elder abuse comes in many different forms – physical abuse, emotional abuse, or financial abuse. Each one is devastating in its own right. Many times, sadly, as with my situation, the elder abuse involves a family member. When that happens, you feel scared, disappointed, angry, and you can’t believe this is happening to you.

He went on to say:

I know because it happened to me. My money was taken and misused. When I asked for information, I was told I couldn’t have any of my own information. I was told it was “for my own good” and that it was none of my business. I was literally left powerless.

Mickey Rooney’s story of exploitation is one many investors experience. In fact, the financial exploitation of the elderly is on the rise. A survey conducted for Investor Protection Trust estimated that at least one in five Americans over the age of 65 – that’s 7.3 million seniors – has been victimized by financial fraud.

SEC Commissioner Luis A. Aguilar recently had some interesting things to say about financial fraud targeting senior citizens at the American Retirement Summit in remarks delivered by his Chief of Staff, Smeeta Ramarathnam – and it wasn’t what you are necessarily thinking.

According to Aguilar, when it comes to the rise of financial exploitation of the elderly, “it is clear there is not federal leadership on this issue.” He noted that the GAO, although not focused specifically on financial exploitation, found that greater federal leadership was needed in this area, and made several specific recommendations to ensure national data collection and response. For example, he observed, the report recommended, among other things, that:

-The Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) determine the feasibility and cost of establishing a national resource center for Adult Protective Services (APS)-dedicated information that is comprehensive and easily accessible;

-The Secretary of HHS, in conjunction with the Attorney General, convene a group of state APS representatives to help determine what APS administrative data on elder abuse cases would be most useful for all states and for the federal government to collect;

-A pilot study be conducted to collect, compile, and disseminate uniform, reliable APS administrative data on elder abuse cases from each state.

Full Article and Source:
Why Aren’t the Feds Doing More to Stop Financial Fraud of Seniors?

Editorial: Nursing Homes May Be Inevitable; Abuse Is Not

When I served as special counsel to the U.S. Senate Aging Committee, we investigated fraud and abuse in public assistance programs. Medicaid provided health care to those that could not afford it and Medicare funded seniors’ medical needs. Both systems were rife with corruption and abuse.

Our undercover operations proved that not only was the medical care poor but government programs were being ripped off by unscrupulous providers. When it came to nursing homes, only one, in all we investigated, delivered appropriate care.

Full Article and Source:
Nursing Homes May Be Inevitable, Abuse Is Not

Senate Aging Committee Hearing Spotlights Need to End Fragmented SNF Policymaking

Emphasizing the need to end fragmented policymaking for the U.S. skilled nursing facility (SNF) sector to help sustain quality gains and boost cost efficiency, the Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care (AQNHC) praised U.S. Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI) for convening today’s [4/18]Senate Special Committee on Aging hearing, and said repeated SNF Medicare funding cuts are no replacement for intelligent reforms that help coordinate care for an aging, increasingly disparate, higher acuity patient population.

“Because Medicare and Medicaid together pay for the care of three out of every four SNF patients, it is crucial to assess not just the impact both programs have on the ability of providers to continue delivering high quality patient care, but also how to improve cost savings by better coordinating today’s fragmented, siloed policymaking process,” said Alan G. Rosenbloom, President of the Alliance. “Funding reduction after funding reduction is no substitute for rational policymaking that can help patients and help stabilize a key U.S. health sector already slated to absorb $48 billion in funding cuts between FY 2012-21.”

Full Press Release and Source:
Senate Aging Committee Hearing Spotlights Need to End Fragmented SNF Policymaking

Aging in America: Future Challenges, Promise and Potential

View The Senate Special Committee on Aging’s Forum: Aging in America, Future Challenges, Promise and Potential

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Senate Special Committee on Aging Holding Forum Today: ‘Aging in America: Future Challenges, Promise and Potential’

Senate Special Committee on Aging Holding Forum Today: ‘Aging in America: Future Challenges, Promise and Potential’

The Senate Special Committee on Aging is holding a forum Wednesday to commemorate the committee’s 50th anniversary, titled: “Aging in America: Future Challenges, Promise and Potential.”

Convened by retiring Committee Chairman Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI), the forum will be held Wednesday from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. (E.T.). Featured panelists include Kathy Greenlee, assistant secretary for the Administration on Aging; Robyn Stone, Dr. P.H., executive director, LeadingAge Center for Applied Research; and Richard J. Hodes, M.D., director of the National Institute on Aging.

The forum will be held in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, in Washington, D.C.

Source:
Senate Special Committee on Aging to Host Forum on Aging

‘Overprescribed: The Human and Taxpayers’ Costs of Antipsychotics in Nursing Homes’

Today, U.S. Senator Herb Kohl, Chairman of the Special Committee on Aging, held a hearing examining the widespread inappropriate use of antipsychotics among nursing home residents suffering from dementia, high costs to taxpayers and the efforts to find safe and effective alternatives.

“When properly prescribed, antipsychotics can offer beneficial treatment for individuals suffering from mental illness,” Kohl said. “However, we have a responsibility to patients and their families to ensure that elderly nursing home residents are free from all types of unnecessary drugs, and we have a responsibility to taxpayers to be certain that they are not paying for drugs that are not needed.”

The hearing highlighted two recent investigations by the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS OIG) that looked at the prevalent use of atypical antipsychotics in the face of a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) “black box” warning and the high costs to taxpayers.

In examining medical records over a six-month period, Daniel Levinson, Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, testified that 14 percent of all nursing home residents, or nearly 305,000 patients, had Medicare claims for atypical antipsychotic drugs and that half of these claims should not have been paid for by Medicare because the drugs were not used for medically accepted indications. He said that for one in five drug claims, nursing homes dispensed these drugs in a way that violated the government’s standards for their reimbursement.

Full press release and source:
Alternatives to Overuse of Antipsychotics in Nursing Homes Focus of Senate Hearing

Watch the Hearing

Senate Special Committee on Aging Holds Hearings on Assisted Living Facility Abuse

It was an early-morning awakening that Alfredo Navas said he’ll never forget: His sister on the phone, telling him that their 85-year-old mother had drowned in a shallow drainage pond behind the facility that was caring for her.

But the safeguards his family had assumed were in place to monitor an elderly woman with dementia – cameras, door locks and vigilant caretakers – failed his mother in 2008, Navas told the Senate’s Special Committee on Aging on Wednesday [11/2/11].

Those abuses and others were chronicled in a Miami Herald series “Neglected to Death,” which focused this spring on critical breakdowns in Florida’s enforcement system, including failures by the state’s Agency on Health Care Administration to fully investigate deaths or to shut down some of the worst offenders among Florida’s 2,850 assisted-living facilities.

“This is America in the year 2011, and these kind of things shouldn’t be happening,” said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who read aloud of the worst examples of abuse.

They include a 75-year-old Alzheimer’s patient in Clearwater torn apart by an alligator after he wandered away from his assisted-living facility for the fourth time; a 71-year-old mentally ill Hialeah man who died from burns after he was left in a bathtub filled with scalding water; and a 74-year-old Kendall woman who was restrained for six hours until the bindings cut into her skin and killed her.

Federal regulators and lawmakers both said that they are uninterested in the federal government being responsible for regulating living facilities. Although more states are using Medicaid money to pay for some portion of assisted living care for the poor, the federal government has a limited role in the facilities their oversight has been and will likely continue to be a state duty.

But federal regulators do want more of an ability to ensure states are doing their part to enforce laws and safety regulations already on the books, said Barbara Edwards, who directs the disabled and elderly health programs group at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Full Article and Source:
Abuses in Assisted Living Facilities Come Under Senate Panel’s Spotlight

Sen. Herb Kohl Wants to Focus on Elder Abuse

Sen. Herb Kohl, the Wisconsin Democrat who chairs the Senate Special Committee on Aging, is calling on the Justice Department to focus more attention on abuse of the elderly. Kohl, in a letter to the department’s Office of Victims of Crime, pointed out what simple arithmetic makes clear. The burgeoning number of senior citizens over time will, by definition, mean that more and more elderly people will suffer from financial and physical abuse.

Kohl wants the office to add elder abuse to the list of priority items that states can cite in seeking funding.

Social scientists have been slower to pick up on the problem of elder abuse than on the harmful treatment of children, which now receives considerable focus from the federal government. Yet a growing number of studies show that abuse of the elderly is widespread. As many as one in 20 report that money has been improperly taken from them in the preceding year. That would translate into 2.5 million people nationally. Those same studies show that the perpetrators typically are trusted advisers – lawyers or financial advisers.

Or members of their own families.

Source:
Senator Wants to Focus on Elder Abuse

Senate Subcommitee Hearing on Guardianship This Thursday!

“Protecting Seniors and Persons with Disabilities – An Examination of Court – Appointed Guardians”

Senate Judiciary Committee
Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts
DATE: September 22, 2011
TIME: 02:30 PM
ROOM: Dirksen Senate Office Building, Room 226

NOTICE OF SUBCOMMITTEE HEARING
The Senate Committee on the Judiciary has scheduled a hearing of the Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts entitled “Protecting Seniors and Persons with Disabilities – An Examination of Court – Appointed Guardians” for Thursday, September 22, 2011, at 2:30 p.m. in Room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Chairman Klobuchar to preside.

Witness List:
Kay Brown
Director, Education Workforce and Income Security
U.S. Government Accountability Office
Washington, DC

Naomi Karp
Strategic Policy Advisor
AARP Public Policy Institute
Washington, DC

Robert Baldwin
Executive Vice President and General Counsel
National Center for State Courts
Williamsburg, VA

Michelle Hollister
Managing Partner
Solkoff Legal, P.A.
Delray Beach, FL

Source:
Hearings and Meetings

Note: This hearing will be webcast – click the Source link to view!