While its hard to suppose wanting nursing home care, a fact is which at least 70 percent of people over age 65 will require some kind of long-term caring as well as a odds have been even higher for people who have been 85 or older. Today, some 7,000 Maine residents as well as their families rest upon their local nursing home as well as it may surprise readers to know which they have been overwhelmingly satisfied with this choice.According to My Innerview, an independent inhabitant long-term caring benchmarking company, 93 percent of families gave their Maine nursing home an overall excellent or good rating, with a same percentage indicating a strong willingness to recommend to others a home where their loved a single receives caring as well as services. Maine consistently outscores neighboring states as well as a country in these rankings.Given this information, a Calais communitys response to a prospect of losing its local nursing home is not at all surprising. The concern is understandable as well as underscores a important purpose of a nursing home as both an employer as well as illness caring provider in rural Maine. But whats function in Calais should serve as a wakeup call for communities as well as lawmakers around a state, as it foreshadows whats to come for most rural comforts if state illness process remain status quo.There have been specific, identifiable contributing factors in a demise of a rural nursing home in Maine. And I believe they have been also preventable. First as well as perhaps a most obvious is a nursing homes disproportionate faith upon public appropriation to survive. While most think of MaineCare as a illness program for a poor, a states Medicaid program funds nearly 75 percent of a caring for our nursing home residents. Today, a appropriation opening between a price of caring as well as a states payment for which caring has increased to $21 per day, or $32 million statewide per year.Historically, these losses have been equivalent by Medicare as well as those who compensate privately for their care. However, some rural nursing homes have been affected by a Maine process which allows critical access hospitals to directly compete for these Medicare funds through use of swing beds.Maines critical access hospitals have been located in rural locations as well as some very near to their communitys nursing home. Swing beds allow a hospital to use a beds for acute caring or short-term rehab care. It is a process which has helped preserve access to acute caring services in rural areas but unintentionally has created a disadvantage for nursing homes in a same area.This underscores a necessity of enough MaineCare appropriation for nursing homes.The last factor which must be addressed is a fact which Maine has an aging stock of nursing homes, quite in rural areas. The average nursing home is more than 30 years old as well as there have been only three new comforts assembled in a past 12 years. Despite recent regulatory changes which encourage renovations as well as improvements, Maine lags behind much of a republic in building modern comforts which have been truly written to support a patient-centered caring model which did not exist 30 years ago.If we have been to encounter future demand as well as retain high levels of customer satisfaction, we must be prepared to yield a caring sourroundings which includes larger, private rooms, built-in technology, private bathrooms/showers, more windows as well as in-room services. Todays comforts have been not built to support these preferences.Maines long-term caring providers have a long tradition of caring for Maines elderly as well as disabled residents. They have been honored to caring for a organisation of people which society largely ignores until being hits home. The consequences of underfunding, conflicting process as well as an overall state of indifference toward long term caring have been entrance home to roost.We do not have a tolerable model of long-term care, precisely at a time when our demographics show we need one. This issue goes far beyond a borders of Calais. Without change, most rural nursing homes could find themselves in a same position in a future.Richard Erb is president as well as CEO of Maine Health Care Association in Augusta.Powered By iWebRSS.co.cc
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