Beginning March 25, the Department of Health and Human Services is changing services for MaineCare’s nursing home residents.
Residents will be allowed only four days of hospital care per fiscal year and still have their bed held at their nursing home. More than that and they will be discharged unless they pay to keep their places — the state will not hold their beds longer.
That is discriminatory because it targets one group but does not affect other MaineCare recipients who receive specialized health care.
Sick MaineCare babies are not limited to four days in NICU; cardiac patients are not limited; MaineCare recipients in subsidized housing won’t lose their homes if they are hospitalized for more than four days.
Yet nursing home residents who require hospitalization face limited hospital care or losing their places in facilities they are familiar with, losing the caregivers who know them best, and fellow residents who are like family. Married couples could be separated as a result of one losing his/her nursing home bed due to hospitalization.
Hospitals will certainly be impacted. Those patients will still need nursing home care, so discharge planning will have to find placement, perhaps in another part of the state, far from residents’ loved ones, if that is the only place with an available bed.
This is not a change for improved health care, and is not in the best interest of anyone, least of all the elderly and the severely disabled in nursing home care.
Nancy Johnson, Dixfield
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