Reports

The National Center for Health Statistics' Long-Term Care Statistics Branch released a report on variation in residential care community nurse and aide staffing levels in the United States. This report presents national and state estimates of staffing levels in residential care communities for registered nurses, licensed practical or vocational nurses, and aides in the United States for 2014.

This report presents the most current descriptive national information on the supply, organizational characteristics, staffing, and services offered by paid, regulated providers of long-term care services in five sectors; and the demographic, health, and functional composition of users of these services. Services users include residents of nursing homes and residential care communities, patients of home health agencies and hospices, and participants of adult day services centers.

The Long-Term Care Financing Collaborative released a final report detailing the consensus framework for long-term care financing reform. LTCFC offered recommendations for reforms to expand access to long-term services and supports (LTSS) for individuals with all financial backgrounds. The proposed changes include: Clear private and public roles for long-term care financing; a new universal catastrophic long-term care insurance program; and redefining Medicaid LTSS to empower greater autonomy.

Mathematica Policy Research submitted several reports on proposed methods for developing and testing risk and reliability. The important contribution for this work is the development of a risk adjustment methodology that can be applied to Medicaid quality measures of the HCBS population. These resources include: Risk Adjustment of HCBS Composite Measures- Volumes 1 and 2; Development of an HCBS Pressure Ulcer Measure- Volumes 1 and 2; and Development of HCBS Quality Measures webinar and slides.

The Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), with funding from the SCAN Foundation, published a report offering recommendations to improve the financing of long-term care. The BPC published another report in April 2014 that examined the challenges in financing and delivery. This report is a follow up of those findings that offers recommendations to improve these issues.

Justice in Aging, with the support of the Albert and Elaine Borchard Center on Law and Aging, released a new paper, Advocacy Starts at Home: Strengthening Low-Income Older Adults and Caregivers. The paper's structure introduces Margaret and her story of being a family caregiver, discusses the problems as a result of the strain of poverty on low-income family caregivers and then offers solutions to help support older adults and their caregivers.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics in collaboration with the Kessler Foundation and the University of New Hampshire's Institute on Disability published this month's National Trends on Disability Employment report (nTIDE). Each month this report is published to mark the changes of employment for people with disabilities.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the annual Nursing Facility initiative report. This report summarizes the impacts from the three-year-old initiative that tests the ways to reduce avoidable hospitalizations. Research from CMS shows that "approximately 45%" of hospitalizations could be prevented with the proper interventions. This report uses the data from experience during the second performance year of the initiative in 2014.

The National Council on Disability (NCD) released a new report on implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and disabilities. This is the second of three reports on the subject. This report includes a review of the literature that studies the impact of ACA implementation on people with disabilities, qualitative interviews with key informants from ten states, an analysis of the ACA implementation choices seen in many states, and recommendations for future research on this topic.

The National Council on Disability released a new report on implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and disabilities. This is the first of three reports on the subject. While the Affordable Care Act is a significant piece of legislation, people with disabilities were largely left outside of the policy conversation. This report is meant to serve as a "roadmap" for people with disabilities and how it will affect them depending on how it is implemented.