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Local lawmakers hope to restore cuts made to home-aid program

Lehner: Math makes no sense because PASSPORT is cheaper than nursing homes.

Home-care cuts may push more seniors out of homes

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By Margo Rutledge Kissell, Staff Writer 6:36 PM Saturday, August 8, 2009

Ohio lawmakers spent half the year passing a $50.5 billion budget.

It took only three days for Ohio seniors to feel the pain.

By then the state had already reached its reduced monthly limit for new enrollees in PASSPORT, a Medicaid reimbursement program offering home-care and assisted-living services for seniors.

By last Monday, 283 Ohio seniors already were on a waiting list for services, said Barbara Riley, director of the Ohio Department of Aging.

The state’s new $50.5 billion budget cut $15 million out of PASSPORT in each year of the two-year spending plan.

As a result, Riley’s department, which administers the program, reduced monthly enrollment from an average of about 900 a month last year to 680.

She hopes that doesn’t scare away others who might be eligible from seeking the services.

“If you don’t apply, you can’t be one of those 680,” she said. “We’re trying to encourage people not to be discouraged by the thought there is a waiting list.”

PASSPORT provides nursing home-level care to frail seniors who are 60 and older through in-home and community-based services such as delivery of meals, visiting nurses, aides and adult day care.

“There is no doubt folks are interested in remaining in their home,” Riley said. “Unfortunately, given the fiscal circumstances, it’s making it more difficult.”

In the last fiscal year which ended June 30, PASSPORT served 37,060 seniors, including Sandy Harrison, 65, of Dayton, who has been in the program five years.

A nurse visits her one-bedroom Park Manor cottage apartment weekly, while home aide Becky English is there four hours a day, five days a week. She cooks, cleans and helps Harrison with everything from bathing to running errands.

PASSPORT provided Harrison with a comfortable lift chair in her living room, a walker, safety features in the bathroom and a life line she wears on her wrist like a watch. Pushing a button summons help in an emergency.

Harrison is adamant about wanting to spend the rest of her life in her own home, not in a nursing home, and she considers PASSPORT an answered prayer.

“I don’t know where I’d be without it,” she said of the program, for which the cost is about one third of what it costs to serve clients in nursing homes.

That fact makes it difficult for some to understand why funding was cut, and it’s one reason state Rep. Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering, said she voted against the budget.

“I am still really scratching my head over how anyone thinks cutting PASSPORT can be considered a cost savings,” she said. “The math is so elementary that I just keep think I must be missing something.”

PASSPORT was vulnerable, in part, because of federal Medicaid guidelines. Riley noted that those guidelines require states to provide nursing-home facility care but not home care, assisted living or similar services. Another factor, she said, is “there is simply a finite amount of money to fund these programs.”

State Rep. Clayton Luckie, D-Dayton, who voted for the budget, said lawmakers were faced with tough decisions on cuts that extended across the board except education.

“It was not a perfect budget,” he said. Both he and Lehner said they hope some of the cuts can be reversed when the legislature returns this fall.

Lehner said Ohio ranks near the bottom of the nation in its ratio of nursing home to home health care expenditures.

“We were 49th several years ago but rose a bit after expanding the PASSPORT waiver program two years ago,” she said. “These cuts probably plunge us back to the bottom,” she said.

Kathy Keller, spokeswoman for the American Association of Retired Persons in Ohio, believes the real losers are the seniors who will find themselves waiting longer to qualify for the services or may be forced to go to a nursing home.

“They don’t need to be shunted into the most expensive option when it’s not what they need and not what they want,” she said. “That’s of great concern to us.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2094 or mkissell@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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The elderly are not the only ones who are receiving home care as alternative to nursing home. There are other Waiver programs out there and have been working with a waiting list for several months. Let's not forget the parents who are caring for their children with severe disabilities or the adults who are disabled and choose to stay in their home.
I'm not sure why PASSPORT is the only program that gets attention when cuts are introduced. We all are affected by the budget.

Faye
10:13 AM, 8/11/2009

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Oh what the heck, Its time for a Change! Everythings under control. Let the old folks and disabled fend for themselves. After all they are not productive like illegal aliens, We'll need to keep paying them. We can give trillions to big businesses so they can pay out those bonuses for a job well done, before the companies fold up. Imagine how much money we can save by disarming nukes and downsizing our military. With all the extra money we save maybe we can buy more oil from Iran.

Fed Up
1:40 AM, 8/10/2009

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Ms, Lehner- Your comment is astounding. Where were you when your Republican cohorts in Congress changed the Medicare requirements and reduced funding on this back in 2005? Another Republican without a clue.

John F
6:11 PM, 8/9/2009

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Wonder if these Ohio lawmakers have older relatives and if they needed these services would get them while leaving other seniors who have paid the lawmakers paychecks for years sitting in "nursing care" facility that the lawmakers would never put their relatives in?

Tera
9:41 PM, 8/8/2009

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