Aging/Older Adults

This monograph summarizes the history of caregiver assessment; considers the reasons for assessing family care; discusses what, whom, when & where to assess; illustrates areas to assess; highlights examples of existing tools; explores commonalities as well as differences in caregiver assessment instruments; points out areas of caregiver assessment that have been neglected; identifies best practice criteria to consider in designing & implementing assessments; & discusses training issues.

The Alliance for Health Reform offered a briefing on Medicaid fundamentals, for those wanting to brush up on their knowledge as well as those new to the subject. Speakers included Senator Jay Rockefeller, Alliance for Health Reform, Ed Howard, Alliance for Health Reform, Diane Rowland, Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured Rodney Whitlock, Senate Finance Committee Republican Staff, Alan Weil, NASHP The transcript, materials, webcast and evaluation are all available.

In the spring of 2005, Minnesota’s Department of Human Services, Aging & Adult Services, will be conducting a Consumer Experience Survey of 600 Elderly Waiver clients. Piloted with 90 EW clients, the current version reflects experiences and feedback from the Quality Design Commission members. The survey instrument is designed to discover the types of help people need to stay in their home, whether or not they are getting that help, & how satisfied they are with their help and quality of life.

The sixth biennial edition of the AARP Public Policy Institute's databook, presents an overview of long-term care in each state plus the District of Columbia by using numbers, graphs, charts, and maps. Data includes each state's demographics, need for LTC and HCBS services, the number of LTC workers per thousand people aged 65 and over, urban average for private-pay home health aide wages, and CNA hours per resident day. Each state is compared with others through rankings and national averages.

Informal caregivers, primarily family, but also friends and volunteers, have been and continue to be integral to the system of providing critical assistance to persons age 65 or older who need long-term care. This Data Profile provides an overview of informal caregivers today compared to caregivers a decade ago. This brief also offers excellent data and charts that offer a pictorial overview of the changes.

North Carolina issued a Request for Proposal notice for an information and referral vendor to serve the ADRC program in February 2005. The purpose of this RFP is to solicit proposals for the implementation of an integrated cost-effective commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) solution that will provide a scalable and flexible Information & Referral (I&R) data management system that incorporates both a central web-accessible I&R data repository and individual I&R services, with minimal customization.

The MOU is developed among the ADRC in Richland County, the Economic Support Services Unit (ESS), the enrollment consultant for WI Family Care program, and the Care Management Organization (CMO). The MOU is intended to help clarify the specific roles and responsibilities, ensure that the participating units understand the key elements of coordination and communication, and to facilitate their working in partnership to achieve quality outcomes for program consumers and the general public.

The supply of affordable assisted living facilities is now insufficient to meet the demands of low-income, frail older persons. This gap between demand and supply is much more apparent in some locations than others. This article uses various measures of locational inequality to assess the extent to which counties in Florida have less than their fair share of ALFs, particularly in comparison to the locations of Medicaid nursing home beds.

This State Policy in Practice brief is the second in a series of reports on how states are addressing laws that regulate nursing practice to be more responsive to consumers’ preferences to live in their own communities. This brief focuses on Oregon’s policies for how nurses may collaborate with consumers in managing health maintenance activities.

Reverse mortgages are specialized loans that enable seniors to tap their home equity while they continue to live in the home. With an estimated average amount of over $72,000 available to older households from these loans, reverse mortgages can help pay for several years of out-of-pocket expenses. This project’s goal is to outline the rationale for increasing the use of reverse mortgages for long-term care and to identify areas where government interventions may be able to stimulate the market.