Solution Helps Keep Seniors At Home
It's not every day you meet someone like Conchy Bretos, who has such a big idea, CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports.
Bretos, who spent years working in state government, is on a mission to rescue low-income senior citizens who might otherwise end up in nursing homes — at state expense.
If not for Bretos, Rafaela Diaz would have been sent to a nursing home. Instead, Rafaela, who's 102 years old, still has her own apartment in a public housing complex for seniors in downtown Tampa.
So does 90-year old Wilma High.
"Who would want to go to a nursing home if you're as able as I am?" High says.
"They don't need a doctor. They don't need a nurse," Bretos explains. "They just need to be supervised."
Bretos' big idea began with a question: How come so many senior citizens being cared for at taxpayer expense were being put into nursing homes when they didn't need nursing home care?
It turns out that under Medicaid, the only kind of state-funded care seniors are entitled to is in a nursing home. That costs Medicaid $47 billion a year, a cost Bretos calls wasteful.More of Wyatt Andrews' interview with Conchy Bretos.
"There is a place for nursing homes, but it has become the dump yard for every low-income senior in this country," Bretos says.
Her idea was to let low-income seniors, who often live in public housing, stay in their apartments. She gets exemptions from Medicaid to bring assisted-living services to them. These services include three meals a day, housekeeping, transport to the doctor and help with medications.
For High, service at home is perfect.
"You don't need a nursing home, but you need extra care," High says.
And taxpayers get extra savings.
A nursing home in Florida costs $48,000 per person, every year. Bretos' assisted living costs $18,000, including housing. That's a yearly savings of $30,000 for every senior.
Back in Washington, the former chief of Medicaid, Mark McClellan says pioneers like Bretos are forcing change.
"It's a good example of how people working around the country at the grass-roots level can change the way a whole big bureaucratic program works," says Dr. Mark McClellan, former chief of Medicaid.
"It's a crisis. It's no longer a need," Bretos says.
That's why the federal government is paying attention to her big idea. In fact it's becoming the model for long-term care: Don't move seniors to care they don't need; figure out what they need and bring it to them.