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22

Patients Jessica and Nathan plead to keep Medicaid PDN nursing care

Tim Rogers posted on April 22, 2010 15:19

 

 
Sadly, Governor Beverly Perdue and DHHS Secretary Lanier Cansler are proposing to restructure and cut home care to Medicaid Private Duty Nursing (PDN) patients who suffer from MS, Cerebral Palsy and many other crippling diseases, etc.

Medicaid PDN is a small, but critical program that serves some 400 of the sickest and frailest people in North Carolina. A good number of these patients are paralyzed, have tracheotomies, use ventilators and many are fed through feeding tubes. Many are infants and young children. They have no where else to go…but HOME.

Please take a moment to look at this video which tells the beautiful story of eleven of these patients.
 
 
I ask that you please forward this video to your family, co-workers, and friends to tell Governor Perdue and Secretary Cansler not to cut this vital home care. We are currently airing this video across North Carolinaon cable television. And we are sending it to legislators and members of the press. I thank you and these patients for helping make this possible.

Cordially,

Tim Rogers, CEO

Assoc. for Home & Hospice Care of North Carolina

 

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02

Advocates fights state to keep personal care services

Tim Rogers posted on April 02, 2010 10:25

Updated 04/01/2010 05:45 PM

Advocates fights state to keep personal care services

By: Loretta Boniti
News14.com

RALEIGH – The State Court of Appeals has extended an order stopping the Department of Health and Human Services from reducing personal care services for Medicaid patients. DHHS wants to make the cuts to save money because Medicaid is $250 million over budget.

The group Home and Hospice Care of North Carolina is currently in the middle of a court battle with DHHS at the level of the State Court of Appeals. Advocates are asking to stop the state from cutting the personal care services.
 
“This program is less than three percent of the total Medicaid budget,” Tim Rogers, with Home and Hospice Care of North Carolina, said. “To continue to slash and burn the personal care services program is a slap in the face to elderly people and senior citizens in the state.”
But the state is looking for Medicaid money wherever they can find it. It is estimated that Medicaid will be $250 million over budget by the end of the fiscal year. DHHS secretary Lanier Cansler says by using a new funding formula for personal care services, the state could save money that he watched get cut from his budget by legislators last summer.
 
“In retrospect, knowing what I know now, I would have certainly fought to find other ways to deal with this budget shortfall,” Cansler said during an interview in December.
 
There will be a hearing at a later date by the State Court of Appeals to determine if the state can move forward with its action to rework personal care services for existing patients. As of Thursday, the state has made some changes to services for any new patients.

 

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29

For Immediate Release: NC Court of Appeals Rules in Favor of Home Care Patients

Tim Rogers posted on March 29, 2010 16:10

 
 


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:      Tim Rogers, CEO
Phone:          919-848-3450
Fax:              919-848-2355
E-mail:         timrogers@homeandhospicecare.org

  NC Court of Appeals Rules in Favor of Home Care Patients

 
March 29, 2010.  Late Friday, the North Carolina Court of Appeals granted two Petitions filed by the Association for Home & Hospice Care of North Carolina (AHHC) on behalf of 37,000 Medicaid PCS patients.  As a result, North Carolina’s Medicaid Agency continues to be barred from implementing a paper review and mathematical formula or other methodologies to reduce personal care hours of services to the elderly, disabled, and chronically ill, who are poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, and thus rely upon Personal Care Services to remain safely in their own home. This Court of Appeals decision extends indefinitely the Temporary Stay that was put in place on March 16th.  The Court also considered the Association’s claim that the recent Order of Superior Court Judge Don Stephens, which had reversed the decision entered by Administrative Law Judge Don Overby, was erroneous.
 
Tim Rogers, the CEO of the Association, commented on this new Court ruling:
 
“This is a major victory on behalf of 37,000 elderly, disabled and chronically ill North Carolinians as well as registered nurses, home care aides and family caregivers. To have a Medicaid bureaucrat in Raleigh decide the fate of care of citizens using a math formula rather than a review by a Registered Nurse or Physician is just wrong. Home Care and Hospice is more preferred and more cost effective than care in an institution and saves the taxpayers of North Carolina millions of dollars.  The Association is dedicated to putting patients and their families first and is very pleased that the NC Medicaid continues to be barred from these unlawful actions. This is a great day for Home Care Services.”
 
-30-

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26

Our Member Nurses are astonished, appalled and aghast - let's turn around bad policy for patients

Tim Rogers posted on March 26, 2010 13:43

"Nurses, today we must lift our heads from the bedside and recognize the challenging environment we are currently in and do something about it. Our profession and our patients can wait no longer – nurses are the bedrock of sound nursing policy and nurses must be heard. Without your help, bad policy decisions will continue to hammer away at the home care and hospice services you hold dear."
          Sherry Thomas, BSN, MPH, AHHC Senior VP, Member AHHC CAREPAC – Capitol Ring

Dear Nurse Advocate:

Did you know that there are over 7,000 nurses in North Carolina that specifically work in home care, home health and hospice? This many nurses could be an influential and powerful advocacy for health services in the home. Most legislators and policy makers have had the opportunity to receive services from a nurse at some point in their lives. 

And, the Gallop Poll last year for the 8th straight year found nurses the most trusted profession - over physicians, pharmacists and way over politicians!

But something is wrong in North Carolina when State Government's actions indicate that they do not trust nurses!

Quite frankly, we are in a time when nurses find themselves and the services they provide pushed aside. We are also in a time when State Government does not trust you the nurse to make ethical and clinically sound decisions for your patients. For example, State Government does not trust registered nurses in a Medicaid program for the elderly and disabled to accurately assess a patient's need for assistance with a bath. Currently these home care nurses provide this assessment at $14.16 an hour. Instead, State Government wants to use an independent assessor who was awarded a no bid contract to provide the assessment at nearly $250 a visit. Isn't this a slap in the face of home care nurses? And an expensive one at that!

But there is no need to feel helpless! We need collectively to lift our heads from the bedside and recognize the environment we are currently in and do something about it!

We need "nurse friendly" and "home care/home health/hospice friendly" legislators and here is why:

  • When State Government proposed to cut Medicaid hospice services last year in the State budget the nurses were astonished! This cannot happen again to Hospice services.

  • When an unfriendly legislator asked for patient data by their race before proposing to cut the home care program (which largely serves minorities) by $40 million dollars the nurses were appalled! This cannot happen again to home care patients.

  • When a daughter in her sixties (still working full time) testified in court with tears in her eyes that her mother in her 80's could not stay home without her home care aide’s assistance, nurses were aghast that the State had landed this family in this situation. (The patient had been a domestic all her life and had no safety net other than Medicaid.) This cannot happen again to poor patients and families.

How do we make a difference and turn around these bad policy decisions?

Join the CAREPAC -the political action committee of the Association for Home & Hospice Care of North Carolina (AHHC).

We need your help to turn around these bad clinical policy decisions! Click Here to download the membership form and join CAREPAC today and please also invite a colleague to join as well! Your $50 contribution or more can make a true difference!

Please consider joining by April 7th, 2010!
World Health Day 

Sincerely,

Tim Rogers, CEO
Tracy Colvard, Director of Government Affairs & Public Policy

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