Florida

The ADRC Pilot Site in Broward County Flordia shared a plan used to measure the agency's goals, strategies, and progress towards provision of culturally competent services. The plan offers guiding principles: responsibilities, implementation period:and outcomes for each of the strategies.

The Independence Plus Initiative was established to give states expanded opportunities within Medicaid to allow for consumer direction of long-term services and supports. The consumer direction movement continues to evolve rapidly, and this calls for federal and state resources to evaluate new and changing programs. This issue paper explores the difference between IP and Cash and Counseling, the 1115 demonstration, IP and HCBS Waivers, and outlines policy implications.

Case study reports on programs in 9 states that received federal Nursing Home Transition Grants from 1998 - 2000 are now available. New reports describe programs, implementation, and lessons learned from transition programs in Arkansas, Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vermont, Michigan, Wisconsin and from a hospital to nursing home diversion program in Colorado.

This issue brief will present several approaches that attempt to tackle the underlying challenge of reducing nursing facility utilization and expenditures. These range from modifying the nursing facility reimbursement methodology; to converting nursing facilities to assisted living centers, paying nursing facilities to take beds off-line, and using capitated managed long-term care; to approaches with theoretical promise that have yet to be adopted in any state.

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.

The survey results highlight inconsistencies and gaps in training, testing, and other pre-employment requirements for nursing assistants. The results from the nurse aide registries are presented in a series of charts. The survey notes who pays for pre-certification training in each state, whether candidates are allowed to become certified by passing the test without undergoing training, whether nurse aides pay a fee to be licensed or certified, who does criminal background checks, and more.

The Compendium contains basic information about each of the Real Choice Systems Change Grantees. The Compendium will help you learn more about how these grants will be used to allow more people of all ages with a disability or long term illness to live and participate in their communities. Real Choice Systems Change Grantees will also find the Compendium useful to identify other Grantees with similar goals and activities. The fourth edition of the Compendium replaces all previous editions.

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.

A number of states have developed rental housing locators that allow online searches for affordable housing units. These sites range from bare-bones databases of state-financed developments to elaborate sites with multiple search criteria, extensive information about accessibility for persons with disabilities, current vacancy information, and links to local service agencies. This report reviews several web-based sites based on several factors and compares the findings.

FPECA is a type I Research Center, charged by the Florida Board of Regents to inform policymakers, media representative, scholars, and advocates on policies, programs, and services for older adults. Available on the site: Florida Training Academy on Aging, State Data Center on Aging, Task Force on the Availability and Affordability of Long-Term Care. FPECA produced reports and a periodic journal, Aging Research and Policy Report.