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BRUSSELS, BELGIUM – “The test for this meeting is not just the quality of our discussions, but the quality of the actions we take when we return to our respective countries,” Massachusetts State Senator Richard T. Moore told an audience of long term care officials and activists from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean gathered in Brussels, Belgium. The meeting was the first “cross-Atlantic exchange” on improving long term care organized by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and the European Commission.
Senator Moore (D-Uxbridge), who chairs the Massachusetts Legislature’s Committee on Health Care Financing, noted the concern among all Western nations about the projected costs of providing high quality long term care for an aging society. He framed the issue by quoting noted author, Peter G. Peterson, who wrote: “The effects of this demographic shift (the aging of the “baby boomers”) will be staggering with a whopping price tag placing a burden on an ever-smaller working-age population.”
However, as Moore and other speakers at the conference noted, the need for expanded home care services, the increased use of the health care and pharmaceutical industries, the need for more personnel to serve the health and general living needs of a population that is living longer, also has significant economic development potential.
Senator Moore told the gathering about programs he had helped launch in Massachusetts to meet the needs of senior citizens who prefer to live at home rather than in nursing homes. Among the projects are: Prescription Advantage, the state’s prescription drug insurance program; MassMedLine, the prescription drug assistance and information program that has saved seniors over $14 million in the five years of its operation, the new “Equal Choice” policy to promote the option for seniors to stay in their homes as long as possible, “Collaborative Drug Therapy,” which promotes a voluntary partnership between physicians and pharmacists for more cost-effective medication management for patients; and the “Senior Care Options” (SCO) program, that enables the most frail, low-income seniors on Medicare and Medicaid to receive a range of specialized services in their homes rather than be forced to enter nursing homes. This latter program, also sponsored by Senator Moore, currently serves 5,394 seniors in the state.
Senator Moore suggested: “pay for performance,” a quality system that rewards service and health providers for better outcomes among their patients; strengthening the state’s Long Term Care Ombudsman – an office that handles complaints about nursing homes – to include quality control of home care services; supporting elder day care programs in nursing homes to better utilize their nutrition, health assessment, and socialization facilities; and promoting healthy lifestyles so that seniors will stay healthy longer, thereby postponing the need for care.
In his remarks to the international conference, Senator Moore proposed eight steps to ensuring the sustainability of long-term care in both the U.S. and European Union:
• Home care must become a viable alternative to nursing home care by developing more high quality services in the individual’s own home.
• Reserve nursing home beds for those who need 24 hour care who are unable to be served effectively at home.
• Maximize the effectiveness of medical personnel who serve seniors and disabled at home through appropriate use of telehealth technology.
• Encourage more public-private partnerships with pharmaceutical manufacturers and schools of pharmacy and nursing to maximize access to non-government supported benefits.
• Encourage healthy life-styles with proper nutrition and exercise as well as prevention, including aggressive efforts to reduce in-hospital infections and falls anywhere.
• Require and provide incentives to purchase of long-term care insurance.
• Promote effective managed care for those with chronic disease or disabilities to improve quality of care at reasonable costs.
• Institute pay for performance systems for all long-term care providers to improve quality of care that benefits seniors and taxpayers alike.
In addition to Senator Moore, other senior U. S. officials participating in the meeting were: Josefina G. Carbonell, Assistant Secretary of Health for Aging, U.S.; Connecticut State Senator Toni Nathaniel Harp, Nebraska State Senator Dennis Byars, and Vermont Commissioner of Disabilities and Aging Patrick Flood.
Among senior government officials attending the conference were: Marion Caspers-Merck,Parliamentary State Secretary for Health in the Federal Republic of Germany; Nikolaus G. van der Pas, Director General of the European Commission’s Employment, Social Affairs, and Equal Opportunities; Dr. Kimmo Limpo, Minister of Social Affairs and Health for Finland; Jennie Chin Hansen, President-Elect of AARP in the U. S.; Mars DiBartolomeo, Minister of Health for Luxembourg; Francoise Forette, Counselor to the French Minister of Health; and Jan Andersson of Sweden, Chairman of the European Parliament Committee on Employment and Social Affairs.
Conference participants included representatives from Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, the European Parliament, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom (Great Britain) and the United States.
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