Yesterday, The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced they deferred more than $1 billion in federal Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota as the states submit additional documentation supporting certain high-risk Medicaid claims.
“In Minnesota, we’re talking about 14 high-risk programs, high-risk service categories like personal care and home-based services,” CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said in a press conference according to Home Health Care News. “Again, often these are services that your family would typically have provided for you that the federal government has started to fund, but unfortunately, it can be abused.”
Actually, these services are typically done by health care professionals. But we don’t have enough of these professionals and the systems won’t pay enough or staff enough. These professionals also don’t work 24/7, including in the middle of the night, to manage care needs, assess the urgency of a medical situation and provide care. So the family caregiver steps in.
This is what these politicians running these agencies don't get.
We aren’t doing the work of the family.
We are doing the work of the system, which is why we need to be reimbursed. The systems only work because of our work. We’re connecting all the systems, correcting the errors made by the systems, managing the care, making the midnight decisions and dispensing the complicated medication regime. We save the systems billions of dollars.
Making the family caregiver the enemy will only create more chaos, dysfunction and burden on the systems. The systems function because of the family caregiver. Remove that family caregiver and the chain reaction across all the systems (payer, provider, medical, health care, workforce) will be devastating.
I used to believe we needed family caregivers in leadership roles just in our caregiving space. I now believe we need family caregivers in leadership roles across all 19 Caregiving Systems™. Family caregivers will lead us to better outcomes and cost savings. I know that because family caregivers do that every day within their own family systems.
Now more than ever, we need to speak out in order for family caregivers to receive the support they deserve.
You can help. Take five minutes:
Tell us how your caregiving experience impacts your spending habits.
Image by F. Muhammad from Pixabay
Resources
The Attack on the Family Caregiver (from June)