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WALA News for July 28, 2005

1. Doyle Vetoes Medicaid Increases, Makes Additional Cuts
2. DHFS Secretary Nelson to Speak at BQA Focus 2005
3. WALA Member Survey – We Need Your Feedback!

1)  Doyle Vetoes Medicaid Increases, Makes Additional Cuts

Exercising his line-item veto power, Governor Jim Doyle left his mark on Wisconsin’s 2005-07 biennial budget, which he signed on Monday. His veto message to the Legislature reflects his commitment to fund K-12 public education. However, the decision to use further Medicaid cuts for school funding has drawn strong criticism from Republican leaders and the health care industry.

Overall, the veto makes approximately $90 million in additional Medicaid cuts on top of the $40 million cut in Doyle’s original budget. Although the largest share of the cuts will impact nursing homes, effects will be felt by assisted living. The vetoes made that will most directly impact assisted living are:

• A cut of $48 million in 2005-06 and $14 million in 06-07, to be found in efficiencies
• A cut of $16.8 million, originally from personal care, to be spread throughout the entire Medicaid program
• Elimination of the Nursing Home Relocation requirement that individuals relocated from nursing homes into the community have lived in a nursing home for 100 days
• Deletion of a study on the costs of the Nursing Home Relocation Program
• Deletion of restrictions on how DHFS uses its Family Care functional screen
• Deletion of DHFS prohibition on reimbursement limits for psychotropic medications
• Rollback of a $2 increase in generic drug copayments in BadgerCare and MA
• Deletion of a study on how certain functions at the Northern and Southern DD Centers could be shared between DHFS,
• Corrections and Veterans Affairs

Doyle did maintain a number of budget provisions affecting assisted living, including:

• The CIP-II Nursing Home Relocation Program
• Relocation of individuals from state centers and ICF/MRs to 5-8 bed CBRFs without DHFS approval
• Creation of nine new aging and disability resource centers serving 13 counties
• Additional funding for Jefferson County ICF/MR relocations
• Support for new COP slots through Community Opportunity Recovery Waivers

The Republican legislative leadership is considering trying to override Doyle’s Medicaid vetoes, but with 3 Democrats in the Senate and 6 in the Assembly needed for an override, the chances for a veto override appear slim.

2) DHFS Secretary Nelson to Speak at BQA Focus 2005

Helene Nelson, the Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services, will be speaking over lunch at the BQA’s “Focus 2005 – Collaborating for Quality, Wisconsin Working Together” conference in Appleton on August 10. Secretary Nelson has served under five governors, and has a great deal of experience working with health care public policy. She is also a co-founder of the Center for Patient Partnerships at UW-Madison, which promotes more patient-centered health care. Secretary Nelson is a graduate of Oberlin College; she and her husband, Jim Arts, reside in Madison. (Biographical information from the DHFS website.)

If you have not registered for the conference, the deadline was Tuesday – but we have heard from BQA that they will be accepting registrations through the end of the day TODAY (Thursday, July 28). Register here.

3) WALA Member Survey – We Need Your Feedback!

The long-awaited WALA Member Survey is now online! Through our easy-to-use Web form provider members can give us feedback on how WALA is – and is not – meeting the needs of Wisconsin’s assisted living industry. By participating in this important survey, you will help us make an already outstanding association even better.

We thank all of the provider members who have already completed the survey. However, in order to get as accurate of a picture as possible, it will be helpful for more than just owners and operators to complete the survey. We ask that every facility manager or administrator also fill out the survey. If you have regional directors or others who have opinions about WALA, we want to hear from them, too. Only a truly broad and diverse perspective from providers large and small will give us a complete picture of how we’re doing.

To give an example, if you are an owner with six facilities, we would like to hear from you and from all six of your facility managers.

Thank you for your participation – it will really help us serve you!

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