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FOR RELEASE WITH A.M. PAPERS ON

FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 2004

NATIONAL REPORT CITES OHIO AS

‘TROUBLE SPOT’ IN CARE FOR THE ELDERLY

WASHINGTON, D.C. (January 30, 2004) – An assessment of health care in the 50 states, released here today, cites Ohio as a state that still spends a disproportionate share of its Medicaid dollars on nursing homes rather than other less expensive alternatives for long-term care. The report appears in the February 2004 issue of Governing magazine.

Although the actual number of nursing home residents in Ohio has declined, the percentage of long-term care dollars that is spent on nursing homes is still among the highest in the country. This situation is not the result of a lack of leadership or recognition of the problem, the magazine found. Indeed, the state has been working diligently over the past few years to improve its delivery system for long-term care, utilizing a great deal of inter-agency cooperation to attempt to shift residents away from nursing homes to community and home-based settings.

But the task has proven to be an extremely difficult one in a state where a great deal of money has been spent on the bricks and mortar that make up the nursing home infrastructure. As Barbara Edwards, deputy director in the Ohio Office of Medicaid told the magazine, “The business interests in the nursing home sector are very powerful. They are receiving $3 billion a year from Medicaid. And they don’t want to see that diminished.”

“We came to have a great deal of sympathy for the men and women who handle health care in the states as we moved forward on our report,” says Katherine Barrett, co-author of the study. “The fact is that they may have the best of intentions, but inevitably run against extremely powerful lobbying groups. In Ohio, it’s been the nursing home lobby. In other states it may the drug companies, doctors’ associations or a host of others. No wonder the average Medicaid director only lasts about 18 months on the job.”

Governing’s analysis of state-funded health care is part of the Government Performance Project, a six-year-old effort, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, to evaluate a wide range of state government management and policy functions. This year’s special report focuses on six critical health care problems facing states: long-term care, public health, mental health, prescription drugs, access to care for the uninsured, and care for children.

The Government Performance Project found and documented the inability of the 50 states’ health care system to deliver improvements in medicine fairly and consistently to many of their citizens. Health care in most states is not just inadequate, the study concluded--it’s deteriorating. “After exhaustive analysis and hundreds of interviews,” says Peter Harkness, Governing’s publisher and editor, “it became clear that there is a health care crisis in America. But it is in no way a medical crisis. It is a fiscal crisis.”

Governing is a policy and management magazine aimed at high-level state and local government officials. An online version of this report will be available at http://www.governing.com/gpp/2004/intro.htm as of January 29. Press releases for each of the 50 states can be found at http://www.governing.com/gpp/2004/press.htm.

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