UPDATE: Bredesen releases details on home-based care
Gov. Phil Bredesen is proposing giving many elderly and disabled Tennesseans the option of staying out of nursing homes by providing them with caregivers in their own homes.
The state spends about $1.2 billion a year on long-term care through TennCare, with about 98 percent of it directed at nursing home facilities.
Officials estimate that Bredesen's plan could direct about half of those funds to home-based care in the next decade.
Bredesen said his proposal would also simplify the process for how elderly or disabled people find out whether they qualify for home-based care.
"At its core this is about keeping people in their homes as long as they want to remain in their homes," Bredesen said. "And it's driven for me by just the experience with my own mother.
It is so clear to me that she would go to any length to remain in her home"
Realizing the powerful nursing home lobby controls where the money goes, JCIL suggested a decade ago they get into the home-care business. No one listened. Thank God the governor is now listening to his mother.
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TennCare Director Darin Gordon said there's no way to predict how many people will select home-based care once it becomes more available. But based on other states' experiences, Tennessee could move to a 50 percent split between home-based and nursing home care in six to 10 years, he said.
The average cost per person in home and community-based care is about $12,000 per year, while nursing home costs for a year can range between $45,000 and $60,000 per person, Gordon said.
If the legislature approves Bredesen's plan this year it will start up in July 2009.
"This is a fundamental restructuring," Bredesen said. "It's about quality; it's about offering choices; it's about simplifying the system."
The administration expects nursing home operators to branch out into home-based care once more money starts flowing in that direction. Click Here for AP Story
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