Elder Alert

Homepage -- Programs and Services -- Contact Information  
 

Editors’ Note: This letter to Senate President Travaglini in support of Senate Bill s.767 (The Dollars Follow the Person Bill) was signed by 26 senators, including Se. Andrea Nuciforo.
 

COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS
MASSACHUSETTS SENATE     

January 26, 2004

The Honorable Robert Travaglini
Room 332, State House
Boston, MA 02133

Dear Senate President Travaglini:

  Under your leadership, the Senate initiated a long overdue realignment of long term care services for the elderly through the reorganization of the Executive Office of Elder Affairs. For the first time ever, nursing home services and home and community based services for the elderly will be run out of the same state agency. This reorganization lays the groundwork for a logical continuum of coordinated services that will better serve senior citizens. However, as the Executive Office of Elder Affairs is reorganized, there is more important work we must do to make sure that home and community based care will be an option for as many of our elders as possible.

  At the opening of this legislative session, several of us filed, An Act Regarding Choice of Long Term Care Services. This bill is fundamentally about the civil rights of the elderly. It asserts that disabled elders who are eligible for Medicaid long term care services, are entitled to receive care in the least restrictive setting possible if they so desire. Under the bill, an elderly disabled individual who might have been cared for only in a nursing home, would now be eligible for a richer package of home and community based services. The dollar value of that service package could go up to the average monthly dollar amount paid for nursing home services.

  This legislation builds on the successful "Community Choices" program we created as part of the FY03 budget but is broader in several important respects. First of all, though the community choices program offers disabled elders a better home and community based service package than previously available, that service package is capped at 50 percent of the nursing home rate. Secondly, participation in the Community Choices program is limited to those in imminent danger of nursing home placement. Under S.767, the successful choices concept could be expanded. That means that more elders could have choices and more choices would be available.

  Under the Community Choices program we have had a taste of our potential success. We have seen that we can do a better job of caring for elders in the community. We have seen that we can even move a growing number of elders out of nursing homes into the community. And we have seen that we can save money doing it.

  Massachusetts has a 65 percent higher nursing home utilization rate than the national average. With S.767, we can give the new Executive Office of Elder Affairs the broad mandate they need to shift care for the elderly from nursing homes to home and community based settings.

  S. 767 has broad based bipartisan support and we believe it embraces what the Senate envisioned through its reorganization of the Executive Office of Elder Affairs. I ask you to consider moving this bill quickly to the floor when formal sessions resume in early 2004.

Sincerely,

BRIAN A. JOYCE     
SUSAN TUCKER                 
RICHARD R. TISEI
ROBERT O'LEARY
ROBERT L. HEDLUND     
SUSAN C. FARGO
STANLEY C. ROSENBERG     
DIANNE WILKERSON     
CHARLES E. SHANNON
JARRETT T. BARRIOS      
CYNTHIA STONE CREEM
PAMELA P. RESOR
MICHAEL W. MORRISEY     
MARK C. MONTIGNY     
JO ANN SPRAGUE
MARIAN WALSH     
THOMAS M. McGEE     
ROBERT A. ANTONIONI
STEVEN C. PANAGIOTAKOS                  
MICHAEL R. KNAPIK
GUY WILLIAM GLODIS                  
ANDREA F. NUCIFORO     
BRUCE E. TARR
HARIETTE L. CHANDLER     
JOHN A. HART     
ROBERT S. CREEDON

cc:      The Honorable Therese Murray, Senate Chair, Committee on Ways and Means