Greatest generation deserves the best health care

Maine’s nursing home residents have spent the best years of their lives building our state and country, community by community. Like thousands of nursing home residents nationwide, these individuals are decorated war heroes and community leaders: teachers, doctors and nurses, volunteers, journalists and small business owners. Now they are also Medicare beneficiaries who rely on the protection of critical Medicare funds that ensure the highest quality of nursing home care and rehabilitative services, and hence, a good quality of life.

With Congress engaged in an active debate about Medicare funding for the health care needs of America’s “greatest generation” of seniors, the threat of across-the-board funding cuts and elimination of adjustments for inflation have become a real and looming threat to the quality of care and services provided in Maine nursing facilities and similar facilities across this nation. What Congress needs to remember is that any cuts in Medicare funding for nursing home care are really cuts in congressional support for the quality of care provided to men and women who have earned the best nursing home care our nation – and Maine – can provide.

As our elected leaders address a dim budget picture in Washington, they may lose sight of the fact that stable Medicare funding is essential to ensure quality care for our sickest and most vulnerable Medicare beneficiaries.

Recently, Congress adopted rules that require cuts in funding in one area of the budget to offset spending in another area. This policy is responsible, but implementation is tricky. The temptation to make across-the-board cuts, or to simply eliminate planned and needed inflation adjustments is not responsible policy, and it is not in the best interest of beneficiaries or their caregivers. Cutting Medicare funds for beneficiaries who require skilled nursing and rehabilitative care will renege on America’s promise to our seniors.

Nursing facilities have made significant strides in improving quality in recent years. Combined efforts of nursing home professionals, government and families have resulted in real and measurable improvements. Facility performance in annual government inspections has improved markedly. In a recent independent national survey of nursing home patients and their families, nursing home care was rated excellent or good by 82 percent of those surveyed. A leading government health care official and head of the Medicare program, Leslie Norwalk, put forward the best rationale for ensuring consistent and adequate funding for Medicare beneficiaries in skilled nursing facilities. She said that government inflation adjustments “reflect our commitment to improving the quality of care in the long-term care setting. … This [funding] represents yet another step to enable nursing homes and the Medicare program to continue to move forward in providing quality services for patients who need post-acute care.”

Cuts in Medicare funding for nursing home care would make it difficult to maintain hard won quality gains – especially as cost increases stem from factors beyond providers’ control. When funding is squeezed, health care providers are far less able to recruit and retain qualified care givers, modernize and refurbish aging facilities and equipment, acquire and implement new technologies to accommodate advances in medical practices, and meet the increasingly complex care and rehabilitative needs of our nation’s seniors.

Given that America’s fastest growing population segment is those 85 and older, the ultimate challenge before us is to, first, ensure that every senior retains ready, ongoing access to quality nursing home care, and second, that our state and nation build long term care infrastructure capable of providing the critical care and rehabilitative services for the baby boomers, just on the retirement horizon. Now is the time for the federal government to strengthen America’s long-term care infrastructure – not weaken it by cutting critical funding.

We need our U.S. senators to (again) help protect Medicare’s funding for care in nursing homes. Let us all resolve to never forget the contributions and sacrifices made by an entire generation of community leaders who need our support. Now is the time to make protecting Medicare’s promise the priority it deserves to be.

Richard Erb is president and chief executive officer of the Maine Health Care Association. Malcolm Dean is the administrator of the Kindred Healthcare-Augusta Rehabilitation Center in Augusta.