AARP: R.I. 38th among states for care of elderly, disabled

PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island ranked 38th, the lowest out of all the New England states, in AARP’s latest edition of “Raising Expectations: A State Scorecard on Long-Term Services and Supports for Older Adults, People with Physical Disabilities and Family Caregivers.”
The scorecard measures how well the nation and each of the states is doing on providing long-term services and supports for older adults. The first scorecard debuted in 2011.
“Our analysis provides a closer look at where Rhode Island is keeping pace and where we fall short,” AARP State Director Kathleen Connell said in a statement. “The report indicates that, as the state with the highest percentage of persons 85 and older, we face exceptional challenges. It is our hope that the General Assembly and state policymakers find the analysis to be a valuable tool.”
The report states that unpaid family caregivers provide the bulk of care for older Rhode Islanders in part because the cost of long-term care remains unaffordable for most middle income families.
In Rhode Island, more than 148,000 residents help their aging parents, spouses and other loved ones stay at home by providing assistance with bathing and dressing, transportation, finances, complex medical tasks like wound care and injections, and more.
The value of this unpaid care totals about $1.9 billion, AARP said.
“With 131,000 members statewide, AARP Rhode Island is dedicated to improving the state’s LTSS performance,” Connell said. “Policy discussions may revolve around data and numbers, but it is people – people’s lives — we’re really talking about. As the state’s population continues to age, long term care will grow as a critical issue for all Rhode Islanders. We need to move forward with greater urgency for our citizens to feel supported in their caregiving endeavors and assured affordable resources in place will grow confidence we all will age with proper available care as well as the dignity everyone deserves.”

The report states that Rhode Island’s older population is expected to increase by 94,000 people by 2030.
Vermont ranked the best among the New England states at No. 6, followed by Maine, at No.10; Connecticut, No. 12; Massachusetts, No. 18; and New Hampshire, No. 32.
The report also said that Rhode Island had next to the lowest median income for households headed by persons age 65 and older at $35,510 – only Maine was lower at $33,358.

The 2014 scorecard indicates that Rhode Island:

  • Ranks fourth highest among states in nursing home residents per 1,000 persons age 65 and over
  • Has a high percent of low-care nursing home residents and spends a far higher percent of its long-term service and support dollars than the national average on nursing home care, as opposed to home and community-based services.
  • Has some of the highest long-term care cost burdens in the country making private pay long-term services unaffordable for the vast majority of older households.

The report said that Rhode Island’s best progress was made in “legal and system supports,” largely due to the 2013 passage of the Temporary Caregiver Insurance Program and caregiver assessment requirements for Medicaid home and community services.

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The report recommends that the state takes steps to improve care for the elderly, including providing state funds to maintain an aging and disability resource center; developing an online benefits screening tool to assist elders in accessing income-assistance benefits and conducting outreach programs to increase participation; and requiring hospitals to provide family caregiver education and instruction regarding nursing care needs when a patient is being discharged.

It also recommended that the state review the state Nurse Practice Act so that certain health maintenance and nursing tasks can be performed by direct care workers and also should explore the use of emerging technologies to better serve clients.

After the 2011 report release, Rhode Island implemented four out of 19 recommendations suggested by AARP, most notably those to promote coordination of primary, acute and long-term care and to strengthen family caregiver supports.

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  1. AARP releases these “scorecards” on a regular basis, seeking to gain funding on home and community based care for the elderly. They are right to do so in Rhode Island, because that part of the long term care continuum is under-funded. But each time they do so, they proclaim that elder care in Rhode Island is terrible, and we end up with headlines like the one above. Every. Single. Time.
    Those of us in the nursing facility world then have to scramble to reassure our patients, their families, and the public that these “scorecards” do not reflect the state’s nursing home care. Why the AARP chooses to ignore the one area of elder care where we excel is beyond me, but by all objective measures, our state’s nursing facility care is excellent. The last time we were rated on our care, in fact, we were ranked first in the country.
    It really doesn’t help to be smeared on a regular basis, simply because our state is subpar on home and community based care. The staff who provide hands-on care in our nursing facilities typically work hard to provide compassionate care, to an elderly population that many in our society seem to want to forget about. They deserve to be appreciated, not overlooked, especially by the AARP.