Washington Update
Washington Update
• Former Sen. Bill Bradley said last week while campaigning for the presidential nomination that he plans to propose a healthcare plan this fall that addresses the needs of home healthcare aides. He added that home care workers should be better trained and paid more. Bradley said he regularly hears complaints from people about their inability to find qualified and trustworthy people to take care of their elderly relatives. To address the problem, Bradley said, the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund has helped create a new corporation, Quality Care Partners, that it hopes will be a profit-making enterprise. The group pays its workers above the prevailing wage for that occupation and pays them for the time they spend in cars traveling to patients’ homes.
• Two home health advocates from Iowa told the Senate Select Committee on Aging that federal regulations are bogging nurses down in paperwork rather than patient care. "Our elderly patients need to know we are more concerned about providing quality services than data collection," said Cynthia Kail, public health director at the Greene County Medical Center in Jefferson, IA. Judith Conlin, director of the Iowa Department of Elder Affairs, said filling out a 19-page questionnaire with one patient takes two hours or more time from a nurse. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), the committee chairman, said the forms are necessary because they are part of the prospective payment system scheduled to begin next year. He did, however, say he was shocked when he visited Kail at the medical center and saw the lengthy forms, reported the Des Moines Register.
• Legislation meant to protect a person’s private medical information could actually open it up to a wider audience, reported the New York Times. The bill drafted by Sen. James Jeffords (R-VT) says that healthcare providers and insurance companies may not disclose information from medical records unless given permission by the individual. It also says that anyone who wants health insurance must authorize the use and disclosure of personal information. "The bill recognizes a right to confidentiality," said James Pyles, an expert on privacy rights who represents the American Psychoanalytic Association and many home health agencies, "but essentially eliminates it by compelling the consent as a condition of obtaining insurance or even treatment in some cases. That’s not really consent; it’s submission."
• Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala told Face the Nation that President Clinton’s plan to help buy prescription drugs for older Americans "will not be as generous as people think." Last week, Clinton announced his plan that would eventually give $2,500 a year in federal money to each Medicare beneficiary to help buy prescription drugs. Clinton has also said that he wants to build up Medicare with $794 billion of federal budget surpluses over the next 15 years. Medicare would receive 15% of the surpluses, keeping it solvent until at least 2025. In the prescription drug proposal, the Clinton administration decided that the premium for drug coverage would start at $24 a month and rise to $44 a month. The government would pay half the cost of prescription drugs, up to a certain level. The maximum federal payment would initially be $1,000 a year, but will eventually rise to $2,500 a year. Clinton also plans to propose modest relief for healthcare providers complaining about cuts in Medicare payments. The administration wants to establish a special fund with less than $10 billion over 10 years, then it will work with Congress to decide who should get the money, be it doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, or home healthcare agencies.
• Medicare patients could continue receiving home care under the Community Nursing Organization Demonstration Project Extension Act. The act would allow home care under Medicare until 2003. The project began in 1987 and involves more than 6,000 beneficiaries in Arizona, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York. It keeps spending to a minimum due to an emphasis on primary and preventative care.
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