Agenda - 05-04-2006-7a - Laserfiche WebLink

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i c~ housing/capacity issue maybe turned over to the full steering committee because they are dealing with housing issues azid having more options for people who need long-term caze. Right now the facilities with good reputations tend to stay full and the facilities that are poor performers and sited for deficiencies often have open beds, She wonders if we need to look at the certificate of need process because the state only allows us to have a certain number of beds in the County in the current nursing homes. She asked if they should look at the current population or plan for the future population. Laws were another issue as well as adult protective services. Thanks to Kate and Florence, the laws pertaining to adult protective services are being reviewed and a lot of changes will be forthcoming which will enable the adult protective workers to screen in more calls than previously. With reference to the Transportation issue, the committee would like to forward it to the full subcommittee.. Getting help from EMS workers was another issue, This would be for long-term care facilities.. In answer to a question from Ami Johnson on the difference between a day hospital and daycare, Jill Passmore said for the daycare you can have the social model or medical model where a person is fairly healthy and able to interact with the group, They are talking about more acute medical conditions with a day hospital. They may not be a danger to others, but a danger does exist. Alice Gordon asked what nursing homes do if doctors won't provide medical care for the patients, .Jill Passmore said that facilities are required to have a medical director. What she heazs is that there are a few medical directors working in a lot of the facilities and are not providing adequate care to the residents. There is one medical doctor who is serving two or three of the facilities in the County which is a big load for one doctor who also has a practice, Kate Barrett said that when a director is overloaded, it is almost impossible for a family member to talk with the doctor. It is really very questionable medical care. .Jill Passmore said that many physicians will discharge their patients once they are admitted into a nursing home or long-term facility because the family member wants to talk with them and they do not have the time to devote to caring for the person and also talking with family members, It encourages people not to speak up because they do not want to move their family member to another facility, Ann Johnson asked if there is a list of the demerits that occur in Orange County annually because they keep talking about evidence-based outcome and if they had this nwnber it would verify that they have a serious problem. Jill Passmore said that there is a website - medicare,gov which lists all the defciencies for nursing homes but it varies how often they update this website, The Community Advisory Committee actually turned over to the County Commissioners a list of deficiencies for one specific facility that at that point had 28 deficiencies and the average in North Carolina is four or five. The Community Advisory Committee turned over a number of complaints to the County Commissioners who wrote a letter which Irad never been done in North Carolina. This got the corporations attention that brought people in from other states to address the problems. Tlis one place has had 12 administrators in a year and a half. Jazr Busby-Whitehead said that she feels one of the big problems is that these nursing homes are run by people who ar'e out of the state. .Jill Passmore said that this one corporation has three facilities -one in Chapel Hill, one in Durham and one in Raleigh. They also have two other facilities that have none or only one deficiency and doing a great,job. It has to do with a constant administrator who takes an interest. Barry Jacobs said that we did scare them.. They made promises and we said that we would be monitoring it. They did bring four people in from out of state. They said that their eastern division had very few problems, but that this facility is considered in their western division which had chronic problems. They tried to say that they needed additional time but were told that they were required to provide continuity of care, quality of life and quality of care at all times because these people have paid Page 5 of 8