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NURSING HOME REFORM
NEWSLETTER
http://www.KyNursingHomeReform.org
June 6, 2005
LOVE FEST IN NORTHERN KENTUCKY
Northern Kentucky civic leaders will roll out the red carpet for
Kentucky legislators including members of the interim committee on
health and welfare on Wed., June 8. Interim committees mostly meet in
Frankfort, but the chamber of commerce convinced the lawmakers to come
to Northern Kentucky for meetings and a ride on the river. Everything
will be lovely and hunky-dory even when representatives of the nursing
home industry testify about all the high quality care they give
residents. They will have a guy there who took a survey to prove it.
They will even trot out the administrator of a non-profit nursing home
in Louisville again to tell what a great job nursing homes do. They
wouldn’t dare put an administrator of one of the for-profit places
before this committee which is quickly learning that in nursing home
industry "all that glitters is not gold." Thankfully, they have invited
a representative of Kentuckians For Nursing Home Reform to counter all
the industry propaganda. If you are up that way on Wednesday, it’s an
open meeting, so drop in and help tell legislators the way it really is
in most nursing homes. The meeting is at the Rosedale Manor nursing home
at 4250 Glenn Avenue, in Covington. It begins at 10 a.m. See you there.
BIG NEWS
FROM THE BIG BLUE
Look for the University of Kentucky Board of Trustees to give the okay
to Praxeis, Inc., out of Jacksonville, FL, to build a continuing care
retirement community on about a hundred acres of land at Coldstream
Research Campus in Lexington. A number of groups and people have pushed
the idea, but it was your humble writer who proposed it most recently in
an op-ed page piece in the Lexington Herald-Leader. Thanks to the
interest of UK President Lee Todd and Sanders-Brown Research on Aging
chief Dr. William Markesbery the board proceeded to investigate the
feasibility. Special assistant to the president Dr. Jack Blanton
spearheaded the investigation and came up with two companies, one of
which is Praxeis which built the similar beautiful community at the
University of Florida. The kicker to the UK project is that facilities
for independent living, assisted living and nursing home care would just
be the first part when they are completed. It was also suggested that
the university recruit a world-class researcher in long-term care for UK
and then utilize the UK Cooperative Extension Service to deliver helpful
information from this researcher to the Kentucky populace through the
county extension offices. The last two parts will follow development at
Coldstream. The UK Board of Trustees is expected to approve Praxeis at
its meeting Tuesday June 14 at 1 p.m.
COMPLIMENTS
TO DR. TODD
If you hang out much on the UK campus or in Frankfort you will hear some
occasional disparaging remarks about the UK President. Let me tell you
from experience that a good president always has his critics. But most
of the stuff I have heard about Lee Todd has, in my opinion, been
unjustified. He is trying hard to move our great state university
forward. Even hopped on a bus to travel the state letting Kentuckians
know what the university is trying to do for them. Well, one of the
things he could tell them is about his work on getting a continuing care
retirement community started at Coldstream and eventually establishing
an endowed chair in long-term care research, making UK one of the top
universities in the nation in caring about our aging population. And who
is to argue that such research is not important? The demographics
predict that our big issues in the future will be on how to take care of
mom and dad, and ourselves as we grow older. So you walk right out to
center court, Dr. Todd, and take a bow for another job well done.
GAMBLING ON QUALITY?
Rep. Tom Burch, D-Louisville, introduced two bills in the last session
to bring slot machines to Kentucky. Part of the cut the state would get
from them would provide a new source of revenue for things like Medicaid
and prescription drugs for seniors, he said. How about getting some of
that money earmarked for hiring more front-line caregivers in nursing
homes, Mr. Burch?….. Former Gov. Brereton Jones is pushing a
constitutional amendment for slots at tracks where the money would be
earmarked for worthy causes, and he told us that one of those causes
could be money to hire more front-line caregivers in nursing homes. The
thing we like about his idea is that with a constitutional amendment,
the earmarking of the money is hard to change…..By the way, Rep. Burch
says slots at racecourses could generate more than $200 million a year.
He estimated in a health and welfare committee hearing (he’s the
chairman) one time that staffing standards being proposed would cost $20
million a year. Of course, what the good rep forgot is that the recent
increase in the provider tax would easily cover $20 million a year, if
that really is what is necessary for quality staffing standards.
RATINGS OF
NURSING HOMES
There are a number of groups and organizations that rate how good, or
how bad, nursing homes are. You can go to our web site,
http://www.KyNursingHomeReform.org, and under Links
find several of them. A nursing home corporate executive whom I respect
points out that they may not be current, however, and therefore can be
inaccurate. This is because the nursing home may have corrected its
deficiencies. He is right. On the other hand the poor rating of a
nursing home may be just continuing a pattern of poor care that shows up
when it is inspected. So it is good to look at the facility’s record on
past inspections. Taken together, these ratings show that there are many
problems in long-term care that constantly need fixing. One of the best
ways to improve care is to hire enough people. Not the only way. But one
of the best ways. Why don’t state inspectors look more closely at the
role sufficient staffing plays in good care? Many of the inspectors are
like mechanical robots. They are taught to score a certain way on
certain things, a sure way to avoid subjective thinking. We need more
subjective observations in the inspection process. There are federal
regulations on staffing, but it takes subjective thinking to utilize
them to the benefit of the residents.
SHOP TALK
The UK public relations office (my old stomping ground) has recently
spawned some real sharp up-and-comers on the Frankfort scene, directly
and indirectly. The governor’s new director of communications is Carla
Blanton, wife of Jay Blanton, UK director of public relations. I almost
hired Carla one time when she was getting started and it was my (and
UK’s) loss that I didn’t. And the new director of communications in the
Cabinet for Health and Family Services is Vikki Franklin, who started
her p.r. career in the UK p.r. office. Her husband is director of TV
services for the UK College of Agriculture. Kind of UK month at capitol
communications offices.
SHORTS….
The national debate on Social Security has drawn an interesting comment
from California Rep. Bill Thomas. He said that "….society has not
successfully addressed chronic or long-term care needs which are totally
related to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid."….. The president of
the National Citizens Coalition for Nursing Home Reform, Barbara
Hengstebeck of Florida, had an answer for the poor mouthing you get from
nursing homes. In an article she wrote for Senior Care Investor she
cites profit returns of 131% to 616% in the long-term care industry….
Strange bedfellows: the AARP hooking up with the American Association of
Homes and Services for the Aging, one of the nursing home industry’s big
lobbying groups, on something called "Friends for Life," a program to
encourage visiting nursing homes….. That same AARP also quotes a study
they say shows that 60 percent of nursing home residents don’t have
regular visitors….. Funding for full-time ombudsmen in every district of
Kentucky was in Gov. Fletcher’s final budget proposal…. A bill was
introduced in the 2005 session to raise the personal needs allowance for
Medicaid patients in nursing homes from the current $40 to $80. It went
nowhere. But because of a lot of pressure from personal care homes, they
got personal needs allowance to their patients increased to $50 a month
from $30. It was written into the state budget…..
QUOTE OF THE
MONTH
"The poor don’t have much of a voice. Nobody listens to them. They’re
not active, they are not articulate and they don’t vote. How many
campaign checks do poor people write? It pales in comparison to the
nursing home industry." – Nelson J. Sabatine, former secretary of health
and welfare in Maryland.
THEY WRITE A
LOT OF CAMPAIGN CHECKS IN KY
Poor folks may not write campaign checks as the quote above says, but
somebody does. We all know that the nursing home industry has a big, fat
checkbook. In fact, the political action committee (PAC) for the
Kentucky Association of Nursing Homes, the big lobbying organization for
nursing homes in Kentucky, has contributed more than $111,000 to
candidates for the legislature since the ’98 elections. According to the
Kentucky Registry of Election Finance, included in that amount were Rep.
Tom Burch, D-Louisville, $4,000, and Sen. Julie Rose Denton,
R-Louisville, $4,500. These are the lawmakers who now head the important
health and welfare committees in the House and Senate. Good investment,
huh? Many bills affecting nursing homes go through these two committees,
or in many cases get stopped in these committees. Nothing illegal at
all. Legislators often take these kind of gifts because they need the
money in a tight race. And the nursing home industry? Such gifts open a
lot of doors for them. And mind you, the $111,000 is just to legislative
candidates. Think about the governor’s races. More about that later.
P.S.
This middle-aged man was going through his mid-life crisis so he went
out and bought him a new bright red Porsche. He decided to take his new
Porsche on a test drive down the interstate one day.
He got up to about 85 mph and all of a sudden he saw this highway
patrolman with his blue lights and siren blaring coming toward him. He
decided he and his new Porsche would outrun the officer. So the man sped
up to 95 mph, and then to 105 mph, but the patrolman was still coming.
The man finally came to his senses and said to himself, "This is crazy,
I could go to jail for this," so he pulled over. The patrolman came to
the car and told the man, "It has been a long day and I am tired. If you
can give me an excuse no one else has ever given me I will let you go."
So the man told the officer, "Last night my wife ran off with a
patrolman and when I saw you chasing me I thought you were trying to
bring her back."
The officer looked at the man and said, "Have a nice day."
Bernie Vonderheide
KENTUCKIANS FOR NURSING HOME REFORM
Tel: (859) 312-5617
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