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FOR RELEASE WITH A.M. PAPERS ON

FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 2004

NATIONAL REPORT PRAISES PENNSYLVANIA FOR

EFFORTS IN LONG-TERM CARE

WASHINGTON, D.C. (January 30, 2004) – An assessment of health care in the 50 states, released here today, lauds Pennsylvania for its efforts at combating the perennial problem of workforce shortages in long-term care. The report appears in the February 2004 issue of Governing magazine.

“One of the big problems in long-term care nationally is a shortage of qualified people who want to work with the elderly and disabled,” said Katherine Barrett, co-author of the report. “Pennsylvania is one of the few to directly attack this problem.” The state started its research with a nationally recognized study of the workforce across the long-term care spectrum, including nursing homes, personal care, adult day care and home care agencies. It then followed up with focus groups of workers throughout the state. The authors note that the legislature responded to the research by providing funding to local agencies to put creative ideas into practice.

Although Pennsylvania has developed a number of innovative approaches to long-term care at the local level, it still has a long way to go in shifting spending from institutional care toward more home and community-based alternatives, according to the report. Some 81 percent of Pennsylvania’s long-term care spending goes to institutional care, and less than 20 percent goes to home care. By contrast, Vermont, one of the leaders in this area, spends only 44 percent of its long-term care dollars in institutions.

The Government Performance Project found and documented the inability of the 50 states’ healthcare 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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