Senior Living News Wire

In this week’s video, I talk about my trip to the White House for an event on elder abuse and financial exploitation. 

The future of mobile health will be bursting with innovative devices and challenging barriers.

LeadingAge CAST released a whitepaper aimed at aiding long-term and post-acute care (LTPAC) organizations in choosing an Electronic Health Record (EHR) system that fits the needs of the organization, its providers and consumers/patients/clients.

At a June 11 White House town hall meeting, senior Obama administration officials discussed the ways in which the Affordable Care Act improved Medicare coverage for seniors, including the promotion of wellness and primary care and the closing of the so-called “doughnut hole” in coverage of prescription drugs under Medicare Part D. They also emphasized the Affordable Care Act’s initiatives to more effectively coordinate care and provide more coverage of home and community-based services (HCBS).

LeadingAge’s Center for Aging Services Technologies (CAST) today released a free online tools and accompanying whitepaper designed to help long-term and post-acute care (LTPAC) organizations identify electronic health records (EHR) products that might meet their needs. 

On June 1, LeadingAge submitted comments to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on its Section 202 FY2013 budget proposal to reinvent the Section 202 program in light of the harsh budget realities. The comments applaud HUD’s efforts to obtain funding for new development and the recognition of the need for long term services and supports for a growing senior population that will be aging in place in affordable housing communities at the same time as they raise concerns about proposed allocation methods, new targeting to frail elders and a new focus on operating assistance only.

The House Transportation-Housing and Urban Development (T-HUD) Subcommittee approved a 2013 budget level of $425 million for Section 202 and $8.3 billion in new money for the renewal of project based Section 8 contracts.

Section 236 Excess Income Reporting and New HUD Collections Policy Update

In February 2012 HUD announced that it would “aggressively pursue” all confirmed delinquent excess income receivables and missing reports related to Section 236 excess income filings. LeadingAge sent out an immediate housing-management listserv announcement warning Section 236 providers to “take notice.”

A Health Affairs article attempts to answer the question, “does shifting  Medicaid spending on long-term services and supports from institutional to home and community-based services, a process known as rebalancing reduce spending and is there a statistical model that could be used to predict savings? The statistical model may be helpful for states to use to determine the pace of their efforts to rebalance in a manner that will increase access to HCBS, but not lead to further budget shortfalls.

Many of you are formulating your fiscal 2013 budgets. You want to know what Medicare payment rates will be next year and what funding may be available for senior housing and services programs. Unfortunately, we don’t expect Congress to reach consensus on 2013 budget legislation before the November elections, but they could pass a bill in the Thanksgiving to Christmas time frame. We do not yet know what Medicare, Medicaid and senior housing changes would be in an end-of-the-year budget measure if Congress were to pass one. We understand this is not a lot for you to go on, and we will do our best to keep you updated on future developments. 

The LTQA summit offered a forum where stakeholders from the government, foundations and provider organizations could define the key characteristics of an innovative community and how organizations could move forward on their own journeys toward becoming one.

This page describes the Honor Flight program, which provides a trip to the WWII memorial to vets at no cost.

On June 6, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan came to LeadingAge to discuss various senior-housing related issues during a meeting of the Leadership Council of Aging Organizations (LCAO).

Reducing hospital and nursing home admissions is the goal of 2 great programs highlighted in the May 23 issue of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Health Care Innovations Exchange newsletter.

What are you doing to celebrate LeadingAge Homecoming Week this week? Our annual celebration is going on this week. LeadingAge Homecoming is a chance to remind your communities and yourselves of the contribution your organization makes. Dozens of LeadingAge members are planning everything from honoring veterans to “senior proms” to community fairs. Many Retirement Housing Foundation organizations are incorporating Homecoming into their 50th anniversary celebration. Please let us know what you’re doing to celebrate. Register your event so we can feature it on our website and in media outreach. If you’d like to share some photos, we’d love to post them on our Facebook page. You can send them to us in an email.