Despite law, still stuck in nursing homes

Marvin Dawkins was a 53-year-old AT&T manager when a blocked blood vessel left him paralyzed. It took 11 years, one lawsuit, repeated tangles over Medicaid rules — and a chance meeting on a church van — before he could extract himself from a nursing home outside Baltimore.

Now he lives in an apartment with the assistance of an aide, gets out for a job that he says gives him purpose, socializes with new friends and old ones, and revels in his freedom. “I determine what happens to me,” he said. “I was there at the nursing home basically just laying in bed and watching TV. I didn’t think it was much of an existence.”

Across the nation, many other Americans who could live elsewhere with help are unwillingly confined to nursing homes or long-term care facilities. Nearly 20 years after the Supreme Court ruled that people with disabilities who require public support were entitled to live in their community, rather than in institutions unless medically necessary, the federal government and states are still far from achieving that goal. Because of budget cuts, inflexible rules, a patchwork of programs and a widespread failure to bolster alternative care, others like Dawkins describe feeling stuck in deeply unsatisfying, sometimes miserable, settings.

“Those people are not in view,” said Eve Hill, the deputy assistant attorney general in the civil rights division at the Justice Department. “We forget about them because they are not in our everyday lives. And that just can’t be the answer. We can’t ignore this.”

Since 2009, the department has conducted investigations, brought lawsuits and settled with eight states over compliance with the court decision, which Hill said changed the assumptions of what people can do. “That requires us to unbuild something,” she added, “and to build it differently.”

Some states, including Minnesota, Oregon and Washington, have made real progress, taking steps like shifting more Medicaid dollars to home support, training caregivers to administer medications and paying family members who provide assistance. But in many others, government inaction and structural obstacles like a shortage of home health care aides has often made nursing homes the only option. South Dakota was singled out last week by federal officials who threatened to sue if the state did not fix its problems.

More than 1.4 million Americans live in nursing homes, but it is hard to know how many of them could move back home. Federal data suggest that about 155,000 nursing home residents have a low need for round-the-clock assistance. And about 217,000 people are of working age, another group that experts say could function well at home. But long-term care experts said that some who are sicker might also be good candidates to leave.

A range of factors conspires to prevent residents from leaving. In many states, Medicaid programs restrict home health services, limiting the hours of care, for example. Waiting lists are common. Mentally ill people, for whom nursing homes are shelters of last resort, are particularly difficult to place. And everywhere, it seems, affordable, accessible housing for people with disabilities is in short supply.

Living at home is not the right choice for everyone, of course, even with assistance. Some people are too ill. Managing aides can be daunting, and family members might not be able — or willing — to care for relatives or share their homes, particularly when cognitive skills are impaired. For those without family, living alone can be isolating.

Still, about half of Medicaid spending on long-term care now goes toward services in the home or community, compared with less than 20 percent two decades ago, though that varies widely by state. Health care officials predict demand for in-home services will only grow as the population ages. Emily Johnson Piper, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Human Services, said, “The baby boomers in Minnesota and across the country have the expectation that they will be offered and afforded availability of services for them to live out their retirement years in their communities.”

Many states have concluded that caring for people at home is more cost-effective. Washington state, for example, has found that its costs for one nursing home resident would pay for home care for seven people. Alabama calculated that it cost the state about $25,000 a year less, per person, to offer care at home.

The few studies that have compared the outcomes of people in nursing homes with those cared for at home have reached mixed conclusions. In one recent study, researchers surveyed thousands of former nursing home residents. They reported significant improvements in satisfaction and fewer unmet needs for help with personal care. However, more than three-quarters of them said they had visited an emergency room or been admitted to a hospital or nursing home during the first year of living in the community. Some advocates have also raised concerns about abuse in unregulated home care.

Representatives of the nursing home industry acknowledged that many residents do not need to remain in their facilities. But they said better alternatives were required. “If there is no one with the state to help coordinate that transition process, then there is nowhere for that person to go,” said Mike Cheek, a senior vice president at the American Health Care Association, which represents for-profit nursing homes. 

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Despite law, still stuck in nursing homes